How to attach a real 747 cockpit to your house.

[Bob Reed]

So Matt, are there any newer photos of the 747?

[747_Classic_Sim]

Bob,

I always have new pictures, but I have stopped work on the 747 until I get my basement cleaned out.  I kept having to buy stuff I already had because I couldn't find the original.  Then there's all the stuff I forgot about.  I finally gave up and decided to do a true cleanup and reorganization.  As the pictures show, there's hundreds of pans and I'm sorting mixed stuff in these pans into organized pans.  The two tables in the middle of the basement floor have all the "build parts" for the 747, like all the original connectors, new pins, fresh cable sheithing, zip ties, crimp terminals, etc.  So when I'm finally done, I can finish panel wiring super fast since all common assembly parts will be in the open.  I have to carefully restore every single instrument and rewire many of them as well.  All those small parts have to be within easy reach in a tray or tote pan someplace.  I keep all the commercial instruments and panels upstairs and all the military instruments and panels in the basement.  The transition to commercial from military means that most of the military parts are being moved to garage storage.  It's a daunting task, but I'll never get the 747 done if I can't find the correct parts instantly.  I did install the emergency descent devices recently as seen in the last picture.

Matt

[blueskydriver]

Hey Matt,

Amazing what you do! Two questions, what are you going to do with your fighter sim? Simlady...the wife...mentioned her F16, so items are needed, and second question, what is your electric bill like? Geesh! I thought ours was forever going to be high and the electric company had a special overdrive gauge and booster switch with my name on it, but you must have a hole darn wall of gauges and switches! Heck, you might even have a Wind Generator with your name on it!

Good to see you joined the insanity here at CB. Oh, my cardboard box vehicle was a spaceship with my younger brother in '76...we were 11 and 9, so your pic brings back those memories.

BSD

[747_Classic_Sim]

John,

The fighter sim takes four dedicated 20 amp circuit breakers in my home's breaker box.  Five if you count the air conditioner that cools the circulated air through all the gasper vents and equipment in the sim.  Without air conditioning, it gets real warm inside with the canopy closed and all that panel edge-lighting lit.  The electric meter spins like a top when that thing is running, but it doesn't get turned on very often, so the electric bill is normal.  I share the same transformer on the utility pole in my back yard with three other neighbros and they can tell when it's turned on by the lights dimming slightly. 

I don't have too many F-16 parts.  The F-16 is the military equivalent to the commercial 737 in the flight sim world in terms of popularity.  Finding real parts is hard enough, but when they show up, competition is extremely brutal.  Since I made the fighter sim with parts from whatever military jet I liked pices of, I had unlimited creative freedom to rework parts in over the years.  Building an F-16 cockpit, or any specific modern fighter cockpit, with all real parts is horribly expensive and agonizingly slow.  I'll keep the fighter sim operational, but I won't update it any longer since the 747 project took over.  Finding all real parts for commercial airliners is far easier. 

Matt

[747_Classic_Sim]

Hi.  I removed ALL of the wiring from the cockpit so I could start fresh with new electrical bundles.  There was no need to removethe Flight Engineer's station as a whole and the way they attached it to the rest fo the cockpit made that terribly unnatractive.  You can see from the pictures below that the area can be cleared.  (I had not cleaned the area yet)  The real time-consumer was de-pinning the hundreds of electrical connectors so I could reuse them.   

If you're interested in the the total restoration to date, I have thousands of high resolution photos of even the most obscure corners of the 747 cockpit before and after wire removal and cleaning.  If you provide me your address I can send you a thumb drive with all the photos.  So if you have a real 747 cockpit, you'll see every single little piece I removed, what's behind it, how I restored it, and what to expect in general.

Thanks.

Matt

[747_Classic_Sim]

Here was teh "before" picture of the same area.