Photo by Konstantin von Wedelstaedt

Okay, so last winter we (Me, my wife and our two small children) moved from a flat in the city to a small house in the suburbs. But – quite importantly – a house with a basement. Before we had children I enjoyed flight sim quite a lot. But the yoke and pedals did not poses that much WAF.

But a basement just calls for a small home project the those long winter evenings. So one day I presented the idea that one of the many rooms below could to build a 1:1 replica of a cockpit. “As long as you keep it downstairs” the answer seemed to be.

So there we have it, the wife accepted and I could start dreaming of being able to sit in my own cockpit one day.

Therefore I have created this blog to let others follow my progress, my fustration and (hopefully) solutions. However I do not expect to re-ivent the wheel. Others have done that so beautifully so my plan is just to steal as much as possible of others ideas.

“Cockpit on a budget” means that I plan to do a lot of work in building, connecting and programming. Cockpit can be bought fully assembled and plug and play-ready. As nice as that idea seems I simply can not afford spending that kind of money. So the plan is to use cheap materials and DIY as much as possible. But in some aspects I know that I need to buy pre-fabricated parts, such as panel-fronts. My DIY skills is not that well evolved. I am not able to produce handcrafted parts with the finish that can be seen on other 737-blogs; my knowledge with electronics is sparse and my tools are limited to normal tools such as a jigsaw, sanding paper, and a soldering iron.

So that is the basic for this project. My timeframe is divided in to two. I hope to ba able to build a mock-up of the panel, overhead and pedestal during the winter. However a mock-up that does not contain fully working parts, but a mock-up that gives the impression of a cockpit. Then over the next years I hope to increase the number of functions on the different parts. First goal is a main panel with screens and a autopilot-unit as well as a (for most parts) dummy-overhead and pedestal.

I hope you find some useful informations on the blog. I will try to keep things as possible.

Happy landings

Peter