Fairly brief update

There’s a much longer update coming in a few days, hopefully. But as a summary, I’ve been working on the pedestal and console and the various panels that will fit on each.

I’ve abandoned the previous pedestal frame and built a new mini-pedestal that only holds my Throttletek flightbox. Why? Well, the pedestal I had built was quite large and frankly I didn’t need something that big in the space I have available. Also, my plan to put a screen in there to use as CDUs and weather radar was compromised when I decided to go down the G1000 glass cockpit route – I wanted a large central touch-screen for an enhanced G1000 setup that could do double-duty as Boeing or Airbus or Avidyne avionics. I decided to separate the CDU part from the main pedestal, and to use the two 7″ touch-screen displays I had originally planned to make radio panels from as the CDU panels instead.

I made an additional panel for the CDUs, and the new mini-pedestal for the throttles, and the three main MIP panels, from sheets of MDF that I bought. MDF is better than ply for this because it’s stiffer at thinner sizes and is good for painting and labelling. It’s also a little easier to cut.

Then I marked out the holes for the various pieces of equipment I plan to put in these panels. On the left panel is my PFC yoke – whose guts I extracted and made a mount for that goes behind the panel – and the PFD and audio panel of my new Emuteq G1000 set. On the centre panel is a 15″ touch screen which will serve as the middle panel of the Garmin setup, and below it space for my Saitek switch-panel which also has the gear and engine start on it. As time goes on I’ll replace the Saitek stuff with scratch-built stuff, so these panels are only a first effort to get my flying – let’s be clear on that. Eventually I’ll build panels from acrylic that I can properly backlight, and 3D-print parts that I need. On the right-hand panel is the MDF of the G1000, and – if I decided to include it – my existing Saitek yoke. Just for two-pilot operation which may happen from time to time.

Then there’s the lower central panel, which sticks out rather like its Boeing equivalent, and this will have my Saitek radio panel – which I’ll stick with for now, although on G1000 aircraft I will set the radio using the Garmin controls – and under that, the twin 7″ displays which will be touch-screen CDUs.

I still need to make some trim for some of the screens – probably 3D-printed – but for now all that remains to be done is to fill and paint the panels and the pedestal, then fit the parts together and test them all out.

Here’s some pictures to pique your interest…