First Panel ?

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The first thing to do is to have a look at the keyboard interface. I started this project after I visited Robert Prather's site. He explains very well the interfacing with the keyboardcontrollercard. Have a look at his site first.

Second you must know how to set up your fltsim98.cfg file, especially the [KEYBOARD ...] and [JOYSTICK ...] sections of this file. Download the fsctrls.docs made by Pete Dowson. You can find them on the http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.

And after that you can start building. Look here to get some ideas.

Here you see an overview of the back of my panel (with the cover removed). On the left-lower side the radiostack, above the radiostack the autopilot, on the right side the swithches of the flight instruments. On the base left the keyboardcontrollerdcard, right of it the yoke (ch produkts) and in the middle the throttle lever.

This is is a closeup of the keyboardcontroller card. The space you have where you can put your wiring on is very small. Because of that I took a copper plate and made grooves in it (to remove the copper film). All the anodes and cathodes of the keyboardcontroller got connected with this copperplate. The wires from the switches were connected with the copperplate too.

You can not use any switch you want. Only socalled momentary switches can be used. They only give an impulse if the swithch is used. If the sitch is not used, it returns to the off position. Some examples:

For the gear a big (momentary) puchbutton was used. In the fltsim.cfg this button is connected with the GEAR_TOGGLE parameter.

For the flaps I used an on – of – on toggle switch. It is connected on the panel in a vertical way. If I push on the upper half the flaps go up (FLAPS_DECR), and the lower half makes the flaps go down (FLAPS_INCR). The same switches are used (in a horizontal way) in the autopilot. Pushing on the left side lowers the selected altitude (AP_ALT_VAR_DEC), the right side increases it (AP_ALT_VAR_INC). The same kind of switches, but with another look to get some variation, are used for the lights. Pushing upwards is off (LANDING_LIGHTS_OFF) and downward is on (LANDING_LIGHTS_ON).

For the rotating knobs on the flight instruments and on the radio stack I used microswitches. Two for every rotating knob. The knob was made from wood with a hole in the middle. Through the wooden knob is a long bolt that goes to the other side of the panel. Between 2 nuts is a aluminum lever. If you turn the knob to the left you push against the microswitch on the left side and turning to the right side activates the other. Here you see a close up of the com1 radio with 2 rotating knobs. The right one (the left one if seen from the frontside) is for the whole digits, (COM_RADIO_WHOLE_DEC and COM_RADIO_WHOLE_INC) the other for the fractals (COM_RADIO_FRACT_DEC and COM_RADIO_FRACT_INC).

Here you see the same switches but now from the side. Because the microswitches are very small I had to mount them on a small wooden strip to get them in good contact with the lever

Now something about the primary flight controls. The yoke was completely disassembled from its plastic housing and fully integrated into the panel. The trim wheel is not used anymore. Instead I use an electric trim on the yoke. The pro pilot pedals are upgraded to. I put a mercury switch inside each pedal. If I use the toebrakes then the mercury switch gets into the on position (BRAKES_LEFT and BRAKES_RIGHT). It works fantastic. As far as I know there are no commercially available pedals on the market that integrate toebrakes into FS. Here you see the back of the ch yoke.

The throttle lever is also moved to another position. I made an aluminum rod and connected this to the potmeter that was removed from the original throttle lever. Here is a closeup.

The clamps that connected the original pilot pro yoke to the table were also integrated into my new panel. Here is a closeup.

With some software I made drawings from a FS98 panel (flight instruments, autopilot and radiostack) and glued these to the front. The turning knobs are painted black, so they are difficult to see in this picture. There are 9 of them on the radiostack and 6 on the basic flight instruments. The white buttons on the radiostack are to hear the morse code to identify the navaids. I am planning to buy a faster cpu to change to FS 2000. After reading the FS2000ctls.doc file (it is in the zip file on the start of this page) that will be very easy. The on;ly thing to do is to change the fltsim.cfg file again. All the FScontrols in FS98 are maintained in FS2000. There are even more in FS2000. But read the documentation for yourself.

It was much fun to make it, but flying FS with this is really great and as real as it gets.

Some last tips. First think about which functions you want to have on your panel. You only can put about 100 functions on your panel and believe me that is not much. Then start drawing your panel before you start building. Then buy your switches and see how many space they require. On the back of my radiostack the switches are very close to each other. So take care that you build it big enough.

Good luck and much fun.

If you want to see a list of al the FS controls I used on my panel look here.

Do you want to see links to some other cockpitbuilders then look here.