Guys, I am wanting to build a two seat mil style jet simpit. Modeled after the F14D. This will enable my grandaughter to RIO for me. Looking for plans, pics, help, advise anything to do with a 2seater, tandem. Please contact me if you can help or know were I can look for help. Thanx Kory

Google for F-14 flight manual

I'm all for getting the grandkids involved. The copter's the first thing my grandsons head for, when they come over.
They love strafing FARPs, with the cannon. Unfortunately, they're usually too impatient to get to the emeny's bases, so they end up creating multiple "friendly fire" incidents.

First off I would find the software, then build the hardware to suit it.
Is there even a sim that models the F14D,and that also allows for two pilots in the same plane???

^That's what I was thinking, I'm not sure we have a two seat capable F14 sim. To be honest we don't have many combat simulations that feature two seat ops these days. Hopefully that will change though.

Building a two-seater would be pretty easy actually. It's the visuals that will give you nightmares.

I just remembered something - the F-14D doesn't have any flight controls in the back seat does it? (or is that just the A model?)

g.

Choosing the software first if definitely the way to go. That, plus whatever work-arounds that you can engineer will dictate what makes sense to do hardware-wise.

If you can only find a single seat F-14D sim, all may not be lost. I remember seeing someone post about making a 2 seat cockpit (of sorts) for use with DCS: Black Shark, in order to get his youngster involved. IIRC, visuals were handled by a projector screen out front. The pilot seat was in tandem behind the 'weapons operator'. The pilot had the usual controls, and the weapons operator had controls that were mapped to the various weapons systms items.

As long as your software of choice will recogize multiple controllers (or if you can make PPJoy handle that for you), you could cobble up something. Maybe put the back seater's position up higher so that they can see over you.

kklix, are you definitely locked in on it being an F-14D?

kklix,

You might want to look at the F-16D. Because it's a trainer variant of the F-16, the front and rear cockpits share the same information. You could duplicate the avionics using a repeater, and the front and rear have full control sets (unlike the Tomcat). Besides, Falcon 4.0 was designed with sim cockpits in mind, and there are plenty of utilities out there to display gauges on networked PCs/monitors. The following picture uses a second PC (and monitors) with MFD Extractor to run Falcon 4.0:


Also, as CyBerkut mentioned, the controllers are going to be the real trick. You will need to find something that will either virtualize a controller to recognize inputs on the same axis, or something that can once again virtualize a contorllre but allow a means of changing the physical controller on the fly.

if i remember correctly F14 RIO does not have flight controls just RADAR and weapon system programming control. so a 2 seat cockpit is possible by routing keyboard emulator to both the controls and replicate gauge / MFD extractor screens . For the grip a modified TM top gun or X-fighter (the latter is better) can be used.

I edited to ease reading.

The old Fleet Defender circa 1994 was the last dedicated F14 sim I remember http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_Defender

You might find an F14 in FreeFalcon or BMS Falcon you could use and you should be able to Extract the displays out of those.

Only other thing might be an FSX add on but that would be pretty boring for the GIB as there's no weapons

Still available on ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fleet-Defender-G...=item3a5f925959

Guess it does model GIB, Tag along weight and balance guy, RIO or whatever you want to call it....

Thanx guys for the replys. F14D is my 1st choice, as it was the _ _ _ _ back in my Navy days on carriers=;) 2seater as I mentioned for the RIO, no flight controls needed back thar. Putting in a DVD player and flight viewing monitor, bunch of switches and buttons, most non-functioning. Working switches for real lights and fan controller. Keep the RIO (grandaughter) happy/busy =;)

Tried downloading Dino Canttaneo F14D with no luck download issues...

Found working RIO panels done by Simsamurai but only for FS9, not FSX. Good info/website...

Bought the Abacus F14D Super Tomcat, ok, not the best looking.

Just bought and downloaded VRS F18, yesterday, nice, fun, but a bit complex, has WEAPONS =;)
So if I can not find suitable works for the F14D may look at doing an F18 with a back seat.

Again, thanx for the comments...
SNookums

Though primarily F16 related, you may find some stuff here

http://www.viperpits.org/smf/index.php?action=forum

FlightGear has an F14b that can be flown in multiplayer mode both as Pilot or RIO to another player in the pilot seat. Weapons are simulated, but have little effect since FlightGear is not a combat simulator. However there is a set of scripts that allows for aerial dogfighting of sorts. All the cockpit and aircraft data can be extracted through multiple protocols, so driving external instrumentation is possible, though it might require a pretty large effort as there are no ready-made solutions. And both he plane and simulator are open source, so if you have some pet-peeve you can always modify it yourself to fix it.

Not an F-14 but didn't Wings Over Vietnam allow for a pilot and WSO/RIO in the game? I seem to remember flying some missions with a few buddies a while back like that and one of the guys had his wife flying as the RIO.

http://www.lotussim.com/

its not f-14, but the dual pits are great

OK, looks like am going to go with the F18F two seater. Back seat will be a bit genaric. So, if you know of anybody with the F18 send me a note. Using the VRS Superbug and someday hopefully the Tacpack will be out.
Thanx for the support.

A possible resource: http://www.thesimulatorstore.com/

Got some nice stuff there. A bit pricey for my blood tho, more on a low budget build=:(

Hey guys, does anyone know if I would be able to use 2 TrackIR systems. 1 for the front seat and one in the back seat? Also, are there any other ready made MFD panels out there besides Thrustmaster? Thanx, Kory

I pulled these images off ebay in 2002: