One of the reasons I am so comfortable in the F-5E cockpit

I not only had this toy and used it to fly the airplanes outside, I spent many hours just sitting at the table with this "cockpit" in front of me. I practiced startup procedures, takeoff, combat, and landing despite the fact that the entire instrument panel was just a bunch of decals. But those decals were very close to the F-5E cockpit and all of that time in front of it made the F-5 cockpit feel very familiar. Just a few years later I would get my first computer, a Timex Sinclair 1000 and get my first taste of PC flight simulation. But the absence of graphics and animation didn't stop me from imagining I was flying a fighter jet in air combat.

Wow, that's pretty sweet! I only vaguely recall seeing an ad for that as a kid, never saw one up close.

man, you are right, that does look very much like someone got a printed cockpit training aid and used many of the same elements onto a basic plastic "dashboard"!! Think whoever designed this toy must have been a legitimate aviation geek!

Very cool - immersion is everything!

My first flight sim was MicroProse F-15 in 1985. Objectively, it was like chasing wire coat hangers over chicken wire, but to me I was in an F-15 over the Persian Gulf and I enjoyed every minute.

I also cruise it at 90% :thumbup:

I had one of those to! Ya know if ya could get those stickers... ;)

Really cool! Thanks for sharing!

I spent a couple of years playing with this before my mother sold it at a garage sale. The cockpit/stick/rubber bands were all in near perfect shape. The aircraft were a little worn from crashing into the ground because I launched up and down the street and they got scraped up on the asphalt. They flew really well. If my son would show any interest at all in toy airplanes, I would buy this on ebay, but planes just aren't his thing.

I knew every switch, gauge, and indicator. I had read about airplanes and space travel since the 2nd grade and didn't need a manual to understand what I was looking at. I got this around the 5th grade, which is also when I got to fly for the first time and was given the opportunity to take off and fly figure 8's in a Cessna 152 and a Piper Cherokee. My dad said you can't learn to fly from books. I was a natural. In the 6th/7th grade I was in Civil Air Patrol and was effortlessly performing coordinated turns without any training. I got glasses in the 7th grade and by the 10th grade my uncorrected vision was so bad, I couldn't even qualify to be a RIO or a crew chief on a helicopter. So computers became the only path I had to fly fighters... and here I am living the dream even if it will never be real.