Piranha Flight Simulator Training System

Today I made a lot of progress on the construction of the cockpit shell, the frame of the frontal view and also the pilot and co-pilot side instrument panels.

Construction of the Front view and cockpit shell

Close up of the construction of the front view cockpit frame

Co-pilot side panel

The pictures on this post show the preliminary test of the installation of the six monitors:

• Three 22″ Flat LCD monitors. (External View)
• Two 15″ CRT Monitors for the Pilot and Co-pilot instruments.
• One 13″ CRT Monitor for the Navigation/Systems Information.

First test of the location of the three 22" monitors for the outside view.

Back view of the cockpit monitor configuration.

Construction of the front view.

Yesterday I began the construction of the cockpit shell starting by building the frontal view of the cockpit where the three 22″ monitors will be located. On this picture you can see the four studs that will make the frontal cockpit window.

Main Instrument Panel with the two side consoles and center console.

Prior to starting the construction of the Flight Simulator Cockpit, the electronics and system configuration was tested for over a year. The Flight simulator Cockpit is built around the Micrsoft Flight Simulator X as its core simulation system software. The simulator will not follow a specific airplane model, instead it will be a universal or generic simulator with a side-by-side seating configuration and side flight sticks. The cockpit will be primarily constructed out of wood and it will have the following hardware components:

• Three 22″ flat panel displays for the out-of-the-window view.
• Matrox TripleHead2Go, Digital Edition.
• Two 15″ CRT monitors for the glass cockpit configuration. These two monitors will display identical instrument views to the pilot and co-pilot.
• One 13″ CRT monitor for the system and Navigation display. These monitors will be located on the center of the main instrument console.
• Two analog Thrustmaster Flight Sticks with the V8 handle. – Thrustmaster Pro Flight Control Systems.
• Two sets of pedals – CH Products Pro Pedals
• Two seats for the flight crew
• Logitech G15 Keyboard
• Gategay AMD Athlon 64X2 System with a 10,000RPM hard drive, 3GB RAM