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There are several
hard decisions to make when building a simulation cockpit. The toughest
choice that lies ahead is about what kind of airplane you want to fly in for
the next years. Somehow, choosing a dedicated cockpit enhances the sense of
realism, and because you always fly in the same environment, you create
habits wich are good for flying. (training is repetition). So it turned out to be a kind of
generic cockpit anyway, but with a clear hint to the layout of the Beech
1900D, with a similar layout of the instruments.
The second though part is that instrumentation. Glass cockpit like in the
Project magenta software or PDMG's Boeing 737NG is
a good choice. I flew with Enrico's Project Magenta
for a long time. But although the simulation is near perfect (I had a real
life pilot fly my first project wich was a
cardboard 737 NG cockpit, and he flew purely on instruments without an itch)
I missed the charm of analog instrumentation. Being
able to dial in the atmospheric pressure, or turn the ADF dial gives a very
nice touch of reality.
But having the instruments on screen and playing with a cardboard cockpit
around the dials is nice for a while, but pretty soon I received some nasty
comments from my wife giving me the impression that I was like a child;
making up a fantasy from paper. She was right, and I decided to push the
limit with real instruments from Simkits. So I drew
some plans, made several mock-ups and finally started building my Beech D1900
cockpit (table version)
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