Thanks! Yeah, the base wobbles left and right a bit when I move the stick. I'll probably end up adding some extra supports extending from the sides of the seat walls to wedge it in real tight. But that won't come until I'm ready to paint and permanently secure all the parts to each other, and that's a ways down the road.

As for whats next, I've been too busy flying Warthogs to really think about it. I got my TrackIR5 on Monday, and just having it has made my sim time so much more enjoyable. I finally tried out one of the missions in DCS A-10C instead of just putzing around in the hills aimlessly shooting at things. I posted the results of that mission in a thread here.

I also got the itch to customize my hog with a skin, my first try I posted here.

I settled on a callsign and I ordered myself a custom flight suit nametag from here. I'm hoping that it will arrive soon.

As for actual progress on Gungnir, I've been rethinking my idea of a full enclosure. As much as I want her to be fully enclosed, I cannot for the life of me come up with a design that I like and also works well in the real world. I can make a full enclosure work, but it'll be ugly as sin, and that is something I want to avoid. I've been thinking that I'm probably going to have to figure a way to skin the pit so that both the seat and desk appear to be one unit. Regardless of the situation with the enclosure, I am planning on adding raised facades to the left and right arms of Gungnir's seat so that they appear to be flush with the top of the inner walls of the chair, and to allow switches to be added more easily. But the final design of the facades depends on the status of the enclosure, so that's also a ways down the line.

I have four tasks that I could get started on right away though, I've just been putting them off. I need to sand all my pieces, I need to prime and paint, I need to make seat cushions, and I need to make an angled riser for my pedals. A distant fifth task I could start is to create a custom switch panel or two on the center console with my IPac that's been gathering dust since I abandoned Aurora.

The cushions will probably come first, followed by the riser, then sanding, and finally paint.

I had some free time today before work due to insomnia, so I picked up some sandpaper and grey primer and got to work. Dismanteled the seat, sanded most of it (the important parts that will show), laid the parts out on some newspaper, and went to town with three cans of spray primer.

Fully coated everything that is going to show, and half-assed the areas that are hidden. Got both sides coated before I had to leave for work. Hopefully by the time I get home everything will be dried so I can put the seat back together.

Gonna need to go back to home depot to get more primer for the console, but that won't happen till Monday or Tuesday due to messed up scheduling at work.

Pics or your lieing.

Haha, here you go. Was too tired to take pics during the process.

Nice, looking good!

Two updates:

First, I finally got Gungnir's console painted.





Second, I got my new videocard from UPS today.



Sapphire Radeon 6870. It's replacing my Sapphire Radeon 4870. I haven't tried out any games with it yet and it's only been installed in my system for about 30 minutes, but already I love it. I'm finally able to use HDMI on my monitor again! My monitor came with a DVI-HDMI cable that got damaged when I moved my setup from the master bedroom to my workshop in the garage about a year ago, so I had to go with a DVI-VGA adapter since my monitor only supports VGA and HDMI. There was a very noticeable downgrade in visual fidelity when I had to do that, and I've been sad ever since.

I was worried that I had actually damaged the HDMI port on the monitor, but was really hoping it was just the cable, and thank goodness it was!

Time to go push this thing to the max!

What is up, SimHQ!? Renic here, and I am back after almost six months of non-activity. A lot has happened in my personal life which prevented me from advancing my build any further. First off, during the winter months my work is traditionally exceptionally slow, so many shifts were canceled each week, which caused a severe decline in my income, which meant that I could not afford to complete any new work on my simpit. In addition, my meager expendable income was spent trying to maintain a new intimate relationship which was doomed from the start, and which ended recently.

But with my work picking back up and my relationship ended, I finally have the time and resources to pick up on my passion once again: pit building!

I haven't done any work on my pit since November, and even after reorganizing my workshop to accommodate a much easier use of my computer as both a daily workstation and flight sim, my pit has only been used a few times each month. It saddens me that Gungnir, my most recent labor of love, has mostly just been collecting dust. But with my new found free time and expendable income, I fully plan on advancing my simpit further.

My first order of business (after dusting) is to finally finalize the seat of my simpit. Anyone with experience padding the seat of an ABC, I welcome their advice and anecdotes. After that, the distance between seat and desk will be finalized, and then permanently affixed to a base "floor", which will then be set upon locking casters to assist with mobility of the pit.

Again, I ask for any advice and encouragement from anyone who has been in my position.

No offense to you Renic, but I do not see the point of building an ABC-pit then mounting it on a permanent manner. The aim of the ABC was to have an easily-transportable pit, but if you were not packing it up every other week for LAN parties, you could add a few more to the design to make it much, much better. Or was it just because the plans for the ABC were readily available?

As for the seat cushions, I read that those making replica ACES cockpits have had good success with using excercise/yoga mats as padding. Basically cut 3-4 layers on the shape you want, find a way to encase it in something that resembles a cover, and viola!

However, chair comfort has always been a problem of mine. I've tried countless office chairs that had a within-reason price tag but most failed within a year or so. Then I thought about car seats --- people sit on them for hours and hours and hours at a time and do not have problems with the seat cushion. They'll have problems with being seated for some time, yes, but no sore parts due to poor cushions. So I got me a decent set of bucket seats and designed my pit around the seat! A long 4-5 hour DCS A10 session is not problem, and I spring out of my chair afterwards with no sore back or joints!

I recycled my seat cushions from my ABC pit from years ago, but IIRC I used 3 inch thick foam from a fabric store, with one piece cut for the seat and another for the back. I used double thickness for the headrest. The seat is covered with a camo carseat cover with the head part cut away as it didn't wrap properly around the headrest. I then covered the headrest with my old od green laundry bag from boot camp.

And those are much the same reasons I've decided to use a bucket car seat in my pit build. Plus, a comfy office chair will run you around $100 and up. A decent bucket seat from the junk yard will cost you about $30 to $50.