Home Cockpit - What’s a Home Cockpit?
Home cockpit means building an aircraft cockpit at home.
Several pieces are needed to build one. First of all you need the appropriated software (Project Magenta for example) which has several units; we could say that at least 6 computers will be fine.
Regarding hardware, you could start from any component; we recommend the overheard because it’s the most important part, from here you command a great part of the aircraft, from engine start to taxi way lights, takeoff and landing. After the overhead and in order of importance, it comes for sure the MIP, which is the central panel. There you will place the monitors needed to visualize the glass cockpit and the MCP (navigation instruments, engine parameters and the automatic pilot).
Next, you install the FMC/CDU which are the aircraft’s computers. Now let’s choose other important components such as the yoke and the pedals, that must be interconnected so both the Captain and the First Officer can flight the aircraft. You will also need the throttles (that should be motorized so you can flight as if you were flying a real plane.) In order to complete a Home Cockpit you must build the cabin. If you have some space available, you could create a platform to host all the components and put them together into an aircraft-like cabin.
There is also the possibility of obtaining a Full Motion of it with pistons –that could be oil-dynamic or electromechanical- interconnected to the simulator through the appropriated software. Obviously, we have not talked yet about the heart of the system which is Microsoft Flight Simulator. We could talk about MFS and would use 20 pages if not more. Clearly, we are talking about the Boeing 737NG because we are specialized in the fabrication of such components. Naturally, you don’t need to follow word by word what has been described above, you are free to follow the path you think is best.
