Hello fellow sim builders!
I learned of this site from James Price, who I've been working with since 1997. This is the first site I've seen where serious enthusiasts can gather and discuss things "on topic" without degrading into a Facebook kind of chaos.
I started with a military simulator back in the late 90s and updated it until 2008 when I simply got tired of reworking the same project. I have a 6 year outdated, but still up and running, website at www.mattssimulator.com (http://www.mattssimulator.com) where you can see where I was with it in 2006. The fighter sim been updated many times since that website was abandoned and I'll post a few pictures. I have since kept it operational, but don't plan on reworking it any longer. But it's an important intro to the 747 project I'm working on now.
When I decided to "go commercial" James Price and I visited a Victorville, CA boneyard to select a 747-300 cockpit for me and there's nothing like standing next to something as huge as a 747. The wheels alone made James and I look like midgets. But the adventure of restoring a 747 cockpit for historical preservation and simulator use is covered in the attached .pdf file, which is rather large at about 6mb.
Building upon the interface designs to the real "steam gauges" in the military sim provides me with the knowhow to get this old analog cockpit back in working order again. And with the quality of simulated panels, like the CDUs I saw in James' cockpit last I visited him, made me realize there's still some of us out there taking on the ultimate challenge of making truly realistic cockpits. Even though I have real aircraft CDUs, interfacing them to a PC is expensive and horribly time consuming. Products like I've seen from Flight Deck Solutions are now so far advanced that it's a no-brainer to use their CDUs as opposed to the real thing. I'm sure when I get to the FMS integration point, I'll become a good customer.
But I like working with the real parts as much as possible and I'll get all of the old analog instrumentation operational. And for those of you out there that need to know how to do that kind of thing are welcome to ask me. In turn, I'll be asking the opinions of other sim builders on some of the simulated parts available and their quality as I have little experience with simulated parts.
So, I'm glad to join this community and hope to share and gain knowledge here.
I hope you enjoy the introduction to my 747 projects in the attachment.
Sincerely,
Matt Wietlispach
WOW
That is really impressive. And it looks like it is complete also.
Let me know if you need any annunsiators. I have a bunch of panels with annunsiators that I will not use.
That is just plain sick!
Matt. I saw a picture of this someplace while the cockpit was attached to your house. I thought to myself then, how could you use that as a simulator like that? lol Loks like you fixed that problem. Nice project! I will read the document in full as soon as I get back home today. Nice to have you here.
Welcome Aboard Matt.
Thank you for your appreciation of this site and our 1200+ crew.
We certainly will be delighted to share our commun knowledge as a lot of us, including myself, would love to be able to bring to life some of those magnificent new "old stock" steam gauges available on the Net.
Having you Onboard is fantastic !
Jack
Welcome Matt,
Your project is just simply incredible. I had seen pictures before of your cockpit attached to the back of the house but never any of the detail. Haven't had time to read your whole article yet but can't wait. I may pick your brain some day on the real instrument interfacing as I recently bought a full 727 set of panels with Collins ADI and HSIs. Still accumlating all the FO panels but well on my way to a future steam gauge driven project to hopefully have side by side with my NG.
Again it is really great to meet you here online and look forward to collaborating with you. Also, you are always welcome if ever passing through far west suburbs of Chicago.
best regards,
Scott
Folks, be sure and look at his fighter sim as well. One of he places I would spend hours drooling when I first got into this back in the late 90s early 2000s. He was way ahead of his time in this hobby!
Wow! What more can I say. First off thank you for joining. We are a great bunch of guys that like to have a living room atmosphere. Sure we have a couple disagreements but we all stay close friends. We couldn't be happier to have you join our family.
Your post is incredible and I want to thank you for it. I already have goosebumps. Can't wait to finish reading it.
Hope you enjoy it here.
Trev
Matt is definitely one of the founders of this hobby. He's been one of my mentors since the early days and his skill with real part restoration/integration is nothing short of amazing. His advisement was the driving force behind my 767 to 777 center pedestal fiberglass conversion project and throttle restoration.
Before
(https://www.cockpitbuilders.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm7.staticflickr.com%2F6143%2F6012426917_8c9784d5ed.jpg&hash=35d6c15025828109c3a377f1f99efd659efb5ff4)
(https://www.cockpitbuilders.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm7.staticflickr.com%2F6123%2F6003778838_4791f941d2.jpg&hash=6b653c7229cbbaca8da9db83566676c1d3381f22)
After
(https://www.cockpitbuilders.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm7.staticflickr.com%2F6173%2F6145376112_4d59009d2d.jpg&hash=4b92f6a4140733a0198de1ac283e92cabfc19245)
I'm glad to see the sim finally made it into the garage!!
Robert Prather
Unbloodybelievable!!!
Analog Heaven :-*
And Mau thought I was nuts...
Brilliant project Matt...inspiring.
Nat
Hmmm an analog Kingair B200, that would be sweet!
Bernard,
I didn't pick the transportation company, the guy I bought it from did. It was JRC Transportation, Inc. and it cost me $7500 to have it shipped via wide-load escort from Victorville, Ca to Cedar Rapids, IA.
hope this helps.
Matt
For those who may wonder how the military sim progressed from 2006 to present, here's a few pictures. Beer seems to help most would-be pilots land better. Can't figure that out. Women make better first-time pilots since they are more gentle with the controls. Guys seem to remember "Top Gun" where Tom Cruise would instantly slam the control stick to some extreme left or right position and hit his leg. That's just not how it works in the real thing. Looks good on film, though. Overcontrolling is a problem for most first-time male fliers of my sim. Kids seem to be more careful fliers, if they can see through the HUD. I barely ever fly it myself since all I see are the things that need fixing or recalibration. Sometimes I'll do autopilot-coupled landings into O'Hare just to see how much of the old sim still works.
Matt?? Are you for real? Seriously.. Wow.. First Axel makes me pee myself, I get all changed and clean, now I get a look at this. I saw many of your Fighter pictures back in the day, and I just can't believe how far you have come. That is one impressive piece of kit.
I especially love all the extra monitors you have to keep an eye on the pilot flying. You really are part of the Elite... Congrats, I would love to take that babe for a spin.
I can only imagine what your 747 will look like when it is complete, I can only imagine the exuberant amount of hours you have spent on that.
:rock:
Trev
I have seen these projects in person, and let me tell you that the pics don't even come close to showing how incredible Matt's restoration abilities are. Meticulous doesn't even begin to describe him. Makes my 737 look like a dusty old heap!!!
James
Oh my gosh. That is just unbelievable. That said very encouraging. I now feel like when I look at my bench full of panels, guages, and such for my future 727 project (whenever I feel my 737 is done which will likely be never) that there is in fact some hope of making the guages come to life.
Outstanding stuff Matt.
Scott
Thanks for all the encouraging comments guys! It only cost me my marriage, social life, and most of my disposable income.
And I had help too. I may be good at electronics and analog stuff, but if it wasn't for James Price's software help and Matt Ford's contributions, and even Ted Deller's programming, it would not be what it is today. We all can't be experts at everything. But Robert Prather was inspired into a long term simulation project that's turned out awesome and even newcomers like Roberto Blanco, who had the chance to visit a few times has amazed me with his 737 efforts. Now he's gathering 747 parts. We can all accomplish what I did, but it takes people working together.
Is doing what I did worth losing a wife, countless thousands of hours and dollars? Well, for a hermit like me, yes, but most people should back off from the level of sickness my sim addiction has cost me.
I do really enjoy seeing other people have fun with flying it and setting bad weather using the instructor's station, etc. Tiny color cameras are hidden everywhere and the pilots get to take home a DVD of their flights. They say I should charge admission.
So beware, if you were making cockpits as I was in the picture below in 1976, the addiction only gets worse when you get to adulthood. There's no medication to stop it either!
Matt
Oh, by the way, James' cockpit is no "rusty old heap"! Flying his sim is far more entertaining than mine since you get to sit next to a copilot who actually knows the proper flap settings for landing. And all those working subsystems!!! Who inspires who here? I blame James for the 747! If I hadn't experienced flying in his real cockpit, I could have remained ignorant.
HA! I have told James a number of times this entire hobby as we know it, is all his fault. Had he just not posted those pictures all those years ago!
Oh, by the way, James' cockpit is no "rusty old heap"! Flying his sim is far more entertaining than mine since you get to sit next to a copilot who actually knows the proper flap settings for landing. And all those working subsystems!!! Who inspires who here? I blame James for the 747! If I hadn't experienced flying in his real cockpit, I could have remained ignorant.
LOL. We have all learned lessons from this hobby, and as James said in his presentation, Balance with family is important. Still everything you have accomplished is amazing. You should be very proud of what you have done.
Trev
Quote from: 747_Classic_Sim on June 11, 2012, 07:24:10 PM
Is doing what I did worth losing a wife, countless thousands of hours and dollars? Well, for a hermit like me, yes, but most people should back off from the level of sickness my sim addiction has cost me.
Matt
"Achievement" is what we are all looking for. All kinds of ways to reach that goal.
Sim Building at that level is one for sure and worth every penny and hour spent.
Besides"Hermit" thinking is OK , it comes with age and experience! :laugh:
Well I was a hermit long before the cockpit came along. I am not a real people person so the hobby fit me well! lol 8)
Matt,
Hey! Glad to see you over here on this site :) i always enjoy seeing your updates on Facebook and look forward to chatting with you and seeing your progress here as well!
Ohh yeah i always have a great time listening to Randy E. trying to explain your latest updates to your sim for the last 10 years or so.. He would usually just give up in laughter as neither of us could explain or understand the complexity of your projects! Lol..
Great article btw!
Mike L
Hi Matt,
Had to chime in since I saw your fighter sim and had to say that it looks pretty sweet. My husband is a sim nut BSD. I made him buy me my own Sim. He just brought it home this week, an F16 built by Tajay Beauparlant.
Woman are lighter on the controls and even though I liked the flying in Top Gun but, I have to admit I was watching the cute butts. ;D
So Matt, are there any newer photos of the 747?
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
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
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
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
Here was teh "before" picture of the same area.