VZC simulator

[wickid]

Hi guy's,

Our club decided we are going to build a simulator as well for training. We've bought a crashed ASK 21 and we are now repairing the fuselage and controls.



Here is our ingenious solution to make the airbrakes feel as realistic as possible. We use the spring to simulate the force of the airbrakes and the gas-spring as damping. The bracket on the left simulates the lock. Is a spring loaded ball which holds the airbrake leaver closed.



I'm building the springs that will simulate the stick centring due to the aerodynamic loads on the ailerons. We had to build a new differential because it was destroyed when the tail snapped of in the crash:



And here is the mounting bracket for the springs. The springs connect directly to the hotelier couplings for the ailerons. The spring is horizontal when connected. I took this photo with the fuselage upside down:



Here is the front canopy. the glass was destroyed in the crash so we'll keep it like it is. We are just filling the edges with filler so it looks nice. It will be painted next week:



We are going to be running a 220 degree visual via Matrox triple head2go. We'll probably run X-plane 10 as default sim, but I'm also installing condor. I'll post updates as we go along. It will probably be fully operational in spring 2013, but we want a flyable sim by the end of this winter.

[wickid]

Hi Guys,

Can anybody tell me how the thermal model in the new X-plane 10 compares to Condor? I'm in doubt which sim to choose for our simulator. We selected 4 software packages to look at: Condor, Silent Wings, FSX and X-plane. FSX is pretty much out due to the bad flightmodel. I'm not very fond of Silent wings as I find it very frustrating software but the flightmodel seems good and it's also capable of the resolutions I'm looking for. But it doesn't have an ASK-21 and I can't change the weather settings in flight. I would like to choose condor but it has 3 mayor drawbacks. I need a big resolution and I need an ASK-21 and I can't change the weather in flight.

Now, I think that X-plane is a good choice. The flightmodel is very accurate, it has an ASK-21, I have a huge resolution at my disposal and I get an instructor station where I can change everything I want during flight. But as I can't play it yet as I have a crappy computer that barely runs condor I need to know how it compares handling wise and with thermal simulation.

Anybody here who has experience with X-plane?

[Flightbase]

We`re just going for a cockpit, too. our first try will be this: http://cinemizer.zeiss.com/cinemizer-ol ... -oled.html with headtracking.
i`m not sure, how good it will work out with condor, but end of next week we should get a cinemizer 3d oled and start testing.
this could be a real alternative for some multi-display solution.

actually i see no reason to pick anything else then condor (since our fuselage is some akaflieg braunschweig fuselage, which no simulator covers..) or duke nukem forever - ups - i meant condor 2.

when we start physical things, i`ll open a thread for our project.

greets, Nik

[Sprunga]

Hi,

Your project looks very interesting!

I can understand why you may want to use X-plane for certain things but the weather model for thermals, on X-plane 9 at least, is nothing compared to Condor. Actually I don't think any of the weather on X-plane is very good. Turbulence is very badly modelled - I can't use turbulence it's very annoying. As far as I can see thermals are just placed randomly around the place.

I don't have much experience with Silent wings, only the Demo, but I can't see why you would go there either. The sticking point for me is that the thermals still lean over with the wind and seem to be stupidly hard to find (but that just could be me and hardly any time using it!)

Condor just seems to be so good for weather. Why do you need to change the weather while flying? It doesn't take that long to exit and then restart the flight.

Anyway that's my thoughts. Maybe someone has more of an idea of the technical stuff with resolutions and stuff.

Good luck with the sim and keep us updated please!

Cheers

Sprunga

[wickid]

Time for a little update.

We have build a nice frame that allows the fuselage to be wheeled into our ASK-21 trailer.

We've got the sim so far that it works. All the controls are linked up via the POkeys56U I/O board. We have full controls in both the front and rear seat (elevator, rudder, ailerons and airbrakes). We also modified an old winch release with a relay so it sends a signal to the I/O board when pulled. The instrument panels are nearing completion.

We spraypainted the fuselage white yesterday. I am now working on the front canopy. Because it doesn't have plexiglass anymore we had to glue a wooden edge all around it to make it stiff enough to be used. Also we had to make the instrument panel higher to fit the 13'' monitor.

We also received 3 projectors and a new computer.

I unfortunately only have a couple of pictures now so I won't bother posting them. Tomorrow evening I'll try to take pictures of our progress so far.

[wickid]

As promised the pictures:

https://picasaweb.google.com/wiek.schoe ... J6TgYXWpAE

[Mnemonic]

Looks very cool!
You should give a try to CumulusX smart little software by Peter Lürkens, which simulates thermals and ridge lift very realistically in FSX: http://www.luerkens.homepage.t-online.de/peter/
It is very good, not comparable to default FSX.

Also here are great set of free FSX Gliders: http://www.fsglider.de/p_e.htm
And extremely nice payware Discus X from Aerosoft (including versions with retractable motor): http://www.aerosoft.com/cgi-local/us/ib ... 1210,11133
and also aerobatic version of Discus: http://www.aerosoft.com/cgi-local/us/ib ... 210,D11231

Good luck with the project!

[wickid]

Thanks, but we tried them all. The flight dynamics are not realistic enough for our simulator. We decided not to use FSX for that reason.

[mrtransavia]

Hi,

This simulator looks very nice!
But do you know where to buy a fuselage for a simulator, because i will make one for the club, but i can't find it.
I'm from the Netherlands.

Regards,
Tom

[wickid]

Hoi Tom,

Deze romp kwamen we toevallig tegen in duitsland toen we daar op kamp waren. Het is lastig om aan gebruikte rompen te komen. Maar sommige clubs in duitsland hebben oude vliegtuigen nog ergens in een hoekje van de hangaar liggen. Je moet gewoon goed zoeken. Ze kunnen alleen nog best duur zijn!

Groetjes

[wickid]

Little update about our sim again. Yesterday I finished wiring the 12 volt system for the instruments so we could give them a test run. We have a 5 volt system for the sensors, 12 volt for displays and 230 volts for the computer. A lot of wires! The panels were build by an other member of our club. They are milled aluminium plates with recesses for the wires and encoders and round holes for the instruments. Glued behind it is a 12 inch LCD screen. I'll try to make pictures of that next time.





The beamer frame will be finished this week. This is just a temporary set up. The screen on the side is detachable and is used for sim maintenance and setup. The computer sits in the back now. This is going to be covered by a plate with a fan to blow out the hot air.



More info to follow. It should be fully operational by the end of February to start training our new students before the start of the new season.

[mrtransavia]

Het ziet er echt super vet uit!

[wickid]

Als jullie zelf ook een sim willen bouwen kunnen jullie altijd langs komen voor ideeen of advies. Het heeft geen zin om het wiel nog een keer uit te gaan vinden.

Groetjes

Wiek

[Mnemonic]

Looks great!

[wickid]

Yesterday we worked on various parts of the sim, we are well on our way to have a first demonstration to the club members next Sunday. I'll make a video of the sim in action then.

Here's some closeups of the instrument panel: