Was that your work, Gene? Thanks! And no need to roll eyes on me dude, I got your PDF safely tucked away with the rest of my research material.

Hello again ICE,

XFLIGHT has no plans for the panels, it has printouts for the panels wich are 1:1 or very near to, so you can get a good aproximation. Like I said I haven't started that build no, and if I actually get to build something it will be more generic and less F-16. You don't have to take those plans to the letter, and you can easely add height, even though you dint mind the low height aproach, you ,may prefer diferently, I think at the thime I was designing it that way to build on top of a bunk bed (not very high ceiling).
On those plans if you check you'll find that the seat Position and general ergonomics do aproach that of the F-16 closely.
As for the measurements I got them from various sources, a lot from Viperpits.org, sure there are people there selling plans that are extremly acurate, but you can also find a lot of Measurement information on some of the build treads themselfs.
It's a lot of work to browse through them, as most of the treads easily span several dozen pages. But it's there.
I though the sketchup file could be usefull to you if you want an aproximation of the F-16 cockpit ergonomics that are easy to build, but if you want go near to the actual thing you need to do further research. Take the plans on xflight as an example, they are way off the actual thing, but the guy built in the past a perfectly functional and aproximate cockpit (that I would love to have) on those plans. If it's functionality and ergonomics you are after, those general dimentions should not fail you.

PLeeeease update the site (or send me a PM with your sfs control box measures).

Hello Sapper,

Yes, I am finding xflight to be an excellent resource, though one has to do quite a bit of digging. His initial cockpit plans are a bit off, I had to revise them based on further research from viperpits. Unfortunately, seat dimensions are quite rare and no claims to accuracy so I guess I'll have to make-do with very close approximations.

Funny how I am after functionality and ergonomics, but want to be as close to the real thing as possible. I guess I want to know how it is in reality, then "modify" from there.

Ice, download the Aces II construction plans from simpits and then use these drawings:
http://www.geneb.org/acesii/aces-ii-seat.dwg
The DWG file contains some design improvements, but the assembly goes pretty much as Chris's original design.
The F-15 seat pan design that i added is also applicable to A-10 seats (they both use the same edition of the ACES II)

The dimensions on the seat plans are all in millimeters. This is important to know for the next step...

Break the CAD file up so you've got one part per file.

You can then import those cad files into SketchUp to use as parts. Here's a video that illustrates how you can do this:
http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=86648

The gross seat dimensions are pretty accurate, but this is still a "low fidelity" base design - you can add all the greebles you want to improve the way the seat looks.

The smartest way to build this thing would be to find a local shop that's got a CNC router and have them cut the parts for you.

g.

Sorry, were you telling me to build an ACES seat in CAD? I saw the .dwg file and it was just plans for the seat.

If you want an ACES II seat, use the drawing I posted. If you want to see what it would look like after you build it, import the drawing into SketchUp.

g.

Excellent. I guess I'm left with no option but to "build" one then, even if it's just a basic drawing

Any confirmation on the accuracy of those plans? And thanks for bringing to my attention that Sketchup can import .dwg files, I didn't know that!

Ice, the drawings are pretty accurate.
The seat pan changes were taken directly off of a 1/6 scale ACES II seat I have. Unless you're planning on dropping it into a real F-16 cockpit tub, you don't have anything to worry about.

There should be a thread around here somewhere that have very good pics that I took of that model.

g.

Thanks Gene. I'm learning more and more of Sketchup every time I use it, and will put that to good use soon