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Yet another A-10C cockpit build :)


swither

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Hi everyone! Been following the community since the early Lock on days but never really posted!

 

I've got a doctorate in Mechatronics engineering and i am a holder of a private pilot license. I figured i would put my skills and access to a whole range of prototyping machines to good use so I started working on my very own A-10C cockpit a couple of months ago.

 

Haven't gotten very far yet, i've got a quite busy work life, but i figured it was time for me to share what i'm doing! This will be a short description with a bunch of pictures, please let me know if you're interested in specific details :)

 

I started out by water jetting the main panel out of 5 mm thick sheet aircraft grade aluminium.

I spray painted the panel with a primer and a gray acryllic color.

 

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Next I decided to laser cut / engrave a bunch of panels (arm panel, caution panel, CDU panel, etc) from acryllic. In order to do that i started out with spray painting the white acryllic black (so that the white color only will show up where it's been engraved).

 

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After a lot of work the panels turned out quite good. I spent a lot of time finding some nice locking toggle switches, which i finally found on ebay. I decided to buy lathed switch tops from LynxDK (http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=138416) which i'm really happy with. I'm in the process of mounting and wiring them up right now! Can recommend LynxDK to anyone looking for the right switch look!

 

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I also bought a landing gear switch from simparts.de (disappointed with the quality i must say).But i think i can modify it to improve it.

 

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I spent some time trying to find momentary buttons with the right click feel, and ended up with a long travel, high force automotive switch which feels great!

 

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I'm currently focusing on electronics. Just designed and ordered a PCB for the caution panel, waiting for it to arrive from china right now. While waiting i'm working on the design of the CDU PCB as well as mounting switches on the panels.

 

As you can see there's a lot of things going on in parallel, but it's slowly moving forward! This post doesn't do justice to the work put in, so let me know what you want me to go more into details about :)


Edited by swither

/Daniel

 

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Wow! Impressive. :)

Great work!

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Looking really good Swither, and thank you for the nice Words :)

 

looks like your going to use a monitor for the gauges, what size are u planning on using?

 

 

Haven't picked a monitor for the gauges yet, focusing on the electronics i need to design right now. I might actually use the laser to cut and build servo controller instruments instead, we'll see :)

/Daniel

 

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Thanks for the reply. I bet those key switches really do feel nice and the extended flat surface will be really helpful to keep the switch cap feeling right when pressed.

 

this looks like a terrific start. And IMO it is much further ahead then "haven't got very far yet". I'm sure you have quite significant time in drawing all those items.

Anton.

 

My pit build thread .

Simple and cheap UFC project

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  • 2 weeks later...

thanks for all the nice feedback :)

 

Just got the circuit boards i designed for the caution panel from the manufacturer. They look great! The boards will basically hold all the LED panels and their controllers. I've gone with PWM controllers so that i can control the brightness of each LED individually.

 

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Will start assembling the board and testing it as soon as i have some spare time :) As you can see i had to order a minimum of 5 boards, so if anyone is interested i might sell a couple of them fairly cheap (with instructions).

/Daniel

 

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One chip for each light of the panel!! How fancy

My rig specs:

Intel Core i7 4770 @3.4Ghz // Corsair 16GB DDR3 // MoBo Asus Z87K // HDD 1TB 7200RPM // eVGA Nvidia GTX 760GT 2GB DDR5 // LG 3D 47" 1920x1080 // Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS // Saitek Combat Pro Pedals // Thrustmaster MFD Cougar pack // PS3 Eye + FTNOIR

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  • 1 month later...

Finally got the time to finish up the electronics for the caution panel :)

 

 

My plan is to connect all panels through ethernet and to use Power over ethernet to power them, that way i can easily turn them all on at the same time. I'm working on a server software for managing the connections!

 

Also bought bought a transponder panel and an intercom panel on ebay which i will interface!

 

cfMu7wi.jpg

 

My next plan is to look into the CDU or the CMS!

/Daniel

 

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  • 2 years later...

What a nice work :thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

 

I must admit, i like the switches used for the CDu and will try to use the for my UFC, but i ask myself the great question, how to illuminate them?

For the CDU, I soldered legs to SMD LEDs to put them over the switch body, but this is a fragile solution....

Anybody got an idea? Swither, how are you gonna solve this?

 

Greetings and keep on building!

 

Wayan

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