B767 MIP

[Goodenough]

At the end of January, It was decided that the way I would build my B767 MIP stand was to manufacture sheet metal parts thru laser cutting, bending and drilling the pieces. After many drawings and measurements I went ahead with laser cutting the pieces. What I like about this process is the cutting surface is clean of burrs and is very precise. In the pictures I have the manufactured piece that was laser cut next to the Boeing real piece in the MIP frame. I compared each piece to the real ones to see how close the measurements were and I'm very pleased with the 1>1 scale that was achieved. Next powder coating all the pieces before assembly.

[jackpilot]

Assuming the real shell is yours, what's the point of replicating these parts??

[Goodenough]

Too cold to work out there. We just got another dump of snow. I need a stand to mount all my panels to it so I can work inside where its toasty warm. Once panels are mounted I can figure out how to connect everything to a power source and computer.

[Goodenough]

I worked on assembling one of the rudder boxes and it came out not too bad.

[kurt-olsson]

Nice!

[Goodenough]

I worked on assembling CDU bay and centre monitor frame...now the other side.

[Goodenough]

Preparing the tray pieces for primer and paint

[Goodenough]

I assembled another important piece to my MIP.....the sidewall support frame. I used the real one as a reference

[Goodenough]

Some more pieces of the MIP that was assembled this week. I wanted to place the panels on the frame to make sure it all lined up and it did....whew.

[Goodenough]

Almost there....now onto the MCP tray and top of frame so I can place the glare shield on. The frame allows me to work on interfacing and connecting everything inside first before it goes into the real cockpit. It will be a SSTD B767

[Goodenough]

Working on the test fit for MCP before tightening everything up. Next fitting glare shield

[jackpilot]

A single seat MIP in a real shell !!!??

[Goodenough]

Yes but not in the shell. That's another project in its self. The SST is for inside use only where I can experiment and work on getting real gauges/annunciators working.

[Goodenough]

Well Im happy with the progress so far. Need to start working on my LED LIGHTS. I mounted some near the MCP....its a start.

[Goodenough]

I had another throttle quadrant and joined it to my homemade stand. I need to start on getting the monitors up for the MIP. I can't decide on what to do next. Information overload.

[Goodenough]

Building the base to set the single seat B767 MIP on.

[Goodenough]

Well got the underside panel below glare done and painted an airspeed indicator that came out of an MD-80 aircraft.

[kurt-olsson]

Nice!

[N606DL]

Nice. How do you plan on doing the avionics displays?

[bernard S]

he is lucky    because symbol.generators external ..

[Goodenough]

Thank you Bernard and Kurt for feedback. I appreciate the help Bernard you provided a couple years ago when I built my B747-400 MIP. I have the FS9 software and four 8 " monitors that is connected to a Nvidea 440 PCI graphics card.

[bernard S]

lol  now you opened can of worms   ..

[Goodenough]

Well youre probably right so I am going do it. Here is what I have for my rig.
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Power Supply: 430 watt ThermalTake
RAM:8 GB (4 x 2 GB) DDR2 PC6400 operating in dual channel mode.
Boot drive: 120 GB Kingston SSD
Data drive: 500 GB Western Digital SATA
Optical drive: LG Super Multi DVD burner.

I installed Windows 7 and everything runs smoothly.
I tore open an old joystick and ripped oit tje guts. Im going to use the potentiometers for my yoke and throttles. I got a friend helping me connect them

[jackpilot]

I tore open an old joystick and ripped oit tje guts. Im going to use the potentiometers for my yoke and throttles. I got a friend helping me connect them

I would buy good quality (high res,)  pots to that end, recycling joystick pots can result in sub-par performance to say the least.
My 2 cts

[Goodenough]

Thanks Jack....never considered that. Im hearing now people use magnets instead of potentiometers. . Anyone here how that works,
Also I downloaded FS9 and LEVEL D B767 on my computer with a addon  that Matt suggested called FS panel studio so that the panels I want can be exported to the four 8" monitors that I got. Anyways I will be working on this for a while. I am following John's (blueskydriver) advise and will avoid the trend to always upgrade or change PC's....like he says chasing the Flight Simulator Rainbow....which is good on the pocketbook .