Electronics inside the P6 project

This is just to show the electronics and power supply positions inside the Primary 6 project. There is one PSU, which is an old stly AT 200W supply stripped from a computer. This drives the servos inside the simkits instruments which is the long circuit board loacated on the right hand side . The one to the left is Leo Bodnar's 32 input controlle. It connects all of the switches. Obviously I haven't shown all of the cables and wires that will make all of this work. It's going to be quite busy inside this chassis. I am also wondering if i should put a 120mm exhaust fan to try and dissipate the heat that will be generated from the PSU. This will be wired up to the supply via a molex connector and will come to life as soon as i turn it on.

Primary 6 - construction of the housing.

Lately, i've been working on the final piece in the puzzle for this project, which is the housing that will hold all the panels, electronics and power supply. I initially was going to make it out of plastic but I went back to a material that is the backbone of simpit construction, wonderful MDF. It's such a versatile material and i have found it very easy to work with in the past.

I've been racking my brain trying to work out the best way for it all to come together and i decided on a housing made up of 3 MDF spars with aluminium rod holding the pieces upright.

It's amazing how many problems can be solved when designing usingwith a computer. When constructing the front spar in CAD I failed to notice the very tight clearance of the warning indicator, and after pieceing it all together in Sketchup, I noticed i had to go back to the drawing board. There was no way it was going to fit. I think I have solved it now but if this was a couple of years ago I probably would have only found that out AFTER cutting the wood.

current CAD drawing of my larger project.

Current CAD drawing of my larger Cessna Glass Cockpit project based on Cessna 172Sp with Garmin G1000.

More work on the Primary 6 project.

This is a render of the switch panel on the right hand side. Eagle eyed among you may recognise the Saitek Radio unit that is an off the shelf product that I am incorporating into the panel to save money. It's a great product (I haven't turned it on yet!) that blends nicely with the dark black/gun metal grey switch panel. There is a few discrepencies that I found while working on the lettering such as the second row of toggles are too high. I need to adjust that in the CAD program before getting it sent to be cut. I'm also not sure what to do with the two empty holes on the right side. Maybe name them USER 1 and USER 2 and rename the circuit breakers to USER 3 and 4. I could always utilise more switches.

I may also change the branding at the top. It's currently named as Rotro Avionics (Rotro standing for RojanTrojan my online name in flight sim forums). I am looking for something that sounds more professional... I thought maybe Garmin?!?!? Just kidding! Something a bit more striking and not so much of a mouthful anyway. NMK MkII stands for NO MORE KEYBOARD, but I fear that is wishful thinking. I have made a MKI which is a smaller design. take a look at that in my older blog @ www.cessnasim.blogspot.com.

Please excuse the geometry of the render on the first image. It all looks very odd... switches pointed in the wrong direction and so forth. It's just an amalgamation of two front images of both panels from my photo pragram. I wanted to quickly see what they would look like together and thought i would post the result. Looking quite sharp, I think.

Some CAD work on the avionics panel

Just a quick CAD drawing that I did today (it was very quiet in work!). I only have a Qcad trial in work so it kept closing every 10 minutes, but I managed to get most of the switch holes in place This is the second panel that houses all the toggle and pushbutton switches that sits alongside the primary 6 panel. It will be painted in black with white lettering. I've been swapping around different switch configurtions and positions to come up with the most suitable design. I am hoping to use these two panels as a testbed for my Cessna Glasss Cockpit project to see how the laser cutting company handles my CAD files and materials. I may be able to go for some sort of plastic panels rather than aluminium, maybe out of polycarbonate to have backlighting on the stencilled letters. It would certainly save weight. My old project was very heavy with just the sheet metal alone. The laser company said that they could do backlighting if I leave the painting and finishing up to them. Even though I already have the left side panel cut out of 4mm aluminium and painted, I may get another one done from these CAD drawings. The painters (a car re-spray company in Bridgend) only painted and baked one side, so it's beginning to chip off at the top. That is NOT good! It was a bit of a rush job to be honest. I still haven't opened my Saitek radio unit yet, as it's a birthday present...damn! I got the good wife to do a rough measure of the outline so I could plumb the numbers into the CAD software to get an outline of the unit. I am hoping to get some photos done of the 3d render mockups so i can take them to Lasers'R'Us (that's their real name!) and start the ball rolling and get some costing done.

Primary 6 Desktop Simulator Project

Primary 6 is a much smaller project that I am developing to use as a general desktop flight simulator. It uses 6 of the primary instruments with it's sole purpose to simulate flying in VFR conditions. The instruments are from Simkits.com in the Netherlands using their old CCU2 controller card. The card runs with an old computer style AT power supply (remember those? Boy was that difficult to find!) and has a switch to turn on/off the PSU, unlike the ATX ones today that is controlled via the mainboard. I have 5 of the instruments so far, as well as the warning indicator. These were left over from my previous now defunct project and I wanted to e able to use them rather than sell them on Ebay. There's not much demand for them now as they have gone over to USB powered devices with the circuit board built into each unit. I still need to get the turn coordinator (about £230 - so expensive now!!!) and the instruments will be complete. The render you see above is just the left side of the project with the right side still in the development phase. A Saitek Radio along with some toggle switches for interior and exterior lighting, ignition, pitot heat and fuel pump on a black panel will be added to the right of the unit. This will be designed in CAD, made up as a render to see how it all fits together and then the files sent to get laser cut at a company in Pyle near Porthcawl, South Wales.