When I made my first switch panel a few months back, Ice had this to say:


... I guess he was right!


This is an Akers-Barnes modified cockpit designed by Jedi (jvanes) and Hammer (mladen) on the ED forums. (With permission from the ABC guys.)
It took a LOT of persuasion to get my wife to sign off on it, so in the end I had to obey the following rules:
1) NO POWER TOOLS! It'll bother the neighbours.
2) NO SPRAYPAINTING DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS! It'll bother the neighbours.
^ This might seem odd, but we live in an apartment in Tokyo, so I have no access to a garage/workshop and we are in close proximity to other residents.

So, tools!

Who needs jigsaws?!

All in all it took me 2 months, cutting for an hour to 90 minutes per day, drawing dimensions in the evening and spraypainting in the dead of night.
I actually ended up having a lot of fun doing everything by hand, and I somehow still have all my fingers, so just making the thing was a great experience all round!

Some mid-progress pics:

Making 18mm ply the XRay way...

The cockpit is 80% plywood, 20% MDF.

Drilling fun, for when you absolutely have to have nice rounded corners...


Necessary reading if you see me with a saw...

And if you want to know which books to use to get a perfect 8.6cm brace, it's Dune, Heretics of Dune and Stranger in a Strange Land. Now you know!

My desk for the past few weeks:


Partway through the project, my wife passed the "workspace" and jokingly asked me to do the classic high-school metalwork no-no and make her a shuriken.
Apparently she doesn't know what happens when you ask me to make a shuriken:


Lots of gluing in this project:

You may notice the most consistent mistake I made during all this - I kept forgetting to mirror the parts, so many pieces don't have the nicer veneer side of the plywood facing out. Still, it doesn't make a huge difference in appearance.

Instrument panel fun:


Stick mount done and labeled appropriately

And one of the more necessary decals:


The beer LZ I've christened "FARP Kirin"


And some extra angles:



Now I just have to make all the fine adjustments to Helios, get my monitor resolution sorted out properly, and I'll be good to go! Finally see you all back in the air shortly!

As always, a massive thanks to everyone who posts in this forum. Every little bit of advice is an inspiration. Cheers!

Holy crap man- congrats! Beautiful work!

Wow... no power tools. You must LOVE that woman!

Very nice! Congrats on a job well done!

+1

That is an impressive work! All by hand and it looks spectacular. Well deserved praise from the others and I'll add my own to the list.
Derek

Beautiful! I had a ABC based pit a few years ago. Been improving ever since but my ABC never looked that good (or I might have stuck with it :-) ).

Do you have a link to the ED discussion?

edit: found it here: ED Forum Link

Very, very good job!

BTW, for those interested, I've posted CNC-ready files to that thread a few years ago. Today I posted a new set sized for 2400x1200 sheets.

g.

You must have toned arms by now! Congrats on the pit! And very nice getting it painted.... my two pits never were painted, I'm too lazy and want to use them straight away...

Nice work on the shuriken too... did you build just one?

What he said it looks amazing being built with hand tool and all! Nice work

Thanks all!



You know it!



It's left me with a rock-hard right arm and the same old left And yeah, just the one shuriken.



Thanks Hitch! Your thread on the ED forums inspired my instrument panel. Cheers!

Cool, glad it worked out for you, when I get a job again I hope to spend some more time pit building. But at least I have something that works at the moment.

Very nice work Xray especially with the restrictions you faced. No doubt that will be an inspiration for those out there that don't have access to power tools. Keep it up!!

Awesome job!!

You are however, officially a sadist - did you wear a rubber mask during the construction too, just to ensure that it restricted your breathing on top of everything else?

One arm tied behind my back and standing on one leg

Actually, that would be 'officially a masochist'. His wife is the sadist!

Hey all, a couple of small updates for your viewing pleasure:

Made some basic cushions (inside the covers are a chopped-up camping mat and an upper layer of low-resistance foam):

As you can see, I can't resist adding a slight fictional twist to my pit

And I stuck some simple greenlines around the engine monitoring instruments for easier viewing and to break up the monotonous black. Note also the spraypainted cap nuts around the other instruments. (You may be interested to know the Japanese call them "bag nuts" - fukuro nuts.)

Very nice Xray!

Great 'office' Xray

Interested to know if you made any changes to Jedi's pit. His seems to "sprawl" a bit more up front, where as your's doesn't seem as wide.

That's the impression given by his three monitors more than anything I think. I followed his plans to the letter (including his revised stick mount, which is a little higher than his original plans for easier control), except for:
- Cutting the instrument panel holes in the front
- Deciding not to mount the upper "lip" above the instrument panel, so I could mount my *ahem* "UFC" (mini-keyboard) more easily, and to give myself the maximum space for instruments and MFCDs
- My own very simple mini-keyboard mount
- Had to make some small adjustments to fit my 19" monitor for the instruments - Jedi's was 17"

Other than that, I bowed to Jedi's wisdom in all aspects of the design