DIY Flight Sim Control Panels

[allardjd 1,853]

 

I recently bought a Kindle book from Amazon for the princely sum of $2.99.  The title is...

 

Almost Aviation: Building beautiful flight simulator control panels 

 

...and the link to the Amazon page is here...

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00S75IY2Q/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o01_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

If you're a little bit handy and enjoy do-it-yourself projects, this book provides detailed instructions for "...build[ing] fully-functional hardware panels to drive autopilot and/or GPS in your Microsoft Flight Simulator X aircraft." 

 

I'm still browsing through the book and don't have a detailed idea of what it takes but it looks interesting and doable.  It does use a purchased controller board for interface with the computer, via USB, so this does not appear to be a project you can do with the kind of things you have laying around in the shed.  

 

I suspect that once someone has done one of these he'll have learned enough to branch out into other FS functions as well, using the techniques outlined in the book.

 

I'm not promoting this, since I'm not deep enough in to know much about how good it all will be, but I thought it interesting enough to be worth posting.

 

John

[brett 2,283]

Might also be good for fixing and getting a little more mileage out of some old pieces that are sitting in the corner. Thanks for the heads up John and let us know if he made any mistakes.