A glider, ultra light plane, GA flying or "just" simulation?

As a sewen year old boy in 1973, traveled with his parents on holiday to Mallorca and was then fascinated by aviation.
The dream was to become a pilot and he began to practise flights on his home PC, in fact he started with a Commodore 64. Also back there were more pilots than there were jobs, so "common sense" made thise boy chose a career in another industry.  Yes, the boy was me.

In 2006 I became more serious and I tryed out some of the various flight options as gliders, ultralight, and then ended up in a local Motor Flying Club.
Here I had 4 flight hours and 11 landings in a Cessna, and thats it's exstrem fun. But the economy and disagreement with "the boss at home" makes me stick to flight simulation.
 

Can you compare flight simulation with the real world flight? Yes and no. There are so many similarities in the two worlds, systems, procedures and principles are the same. It's probably also why there is some pilots who also use the flight simulator at home, the simulator is in fact great for practicing routines and emergency procedure. And it doesn't hurt at all when one screws up an emergency landing in the simulator. The biggest shortcoming is the G impact , which is not reproduced in my simulator.

If you go all the way to the extremes, you can online, find these strange and a little geeky simulator freaks who just can't get it realistic enough, it is usually those who wanted to be a pilot, but never became it, perhaps because there were other things in the way, such as financial crisis, wife, dog and children.

Many of these "nerds" can not settle for simulator cockpits of Cessna size, no, some of them going so far as to cut the front end of a Boeing 747 and use it as a mokup for their simulator cockpit, or simpit as it also is called.
Other less serious simpits pilots uses 3-4 computer screens to form their simpit.
But the majority of simulator pilots "just" using their home computer and a cheap joystick.

One of the most amazing things in flight simulation is that you can fill the hangar with all sorts of fun and exciting planes, and you can always fly the airplane that you're in the mood for, in all weather conditions and all over the world.

Back in 2009 I bought Leonardo's MD-80 maddog, to my hangar, this addon plane, is praised for its realistic features and for the exact details. It did not take me long before I have fallen in love with this gorgeous aeroplane, which is perhaps better known as DC 9. I then spent a great deal of time in the "cockpit" of this MD-80.
But realism is missing when you only have standard plastic hardware connected to the PC and sitting on an old chair.
So I began to wonder if I could make it more realistic, I knew that there are much guidance on the wold wide web if you want to build a simpit, for example for the Boeing 737, then the net can provide you with a kind of  "sim build manual", and almost all the software is free to download and a lot of good forums will help you.
But if you get the crazy idea to build an MD-80, there was nothing to find online, this in itself is and has become a major, but fun challenge.

After a long search on the web, it turned out that actually there was one more in the world with the same idears, his name is Frank, and amazingly enough, he lives in Skejby in Denmark, not fare away from my home.
So now we were two to work on the project, and we can share some of the tasks, becaurse thise are there certainly enough of.

Shortly after Leif called in, so now we are 3 people on the danish project, and a "MD-80 cockpit build" home page was created: http://www.md80project.dk

Shortly after the www.md80project.dk was published, the project actually became quite international, as several new MD-80 / DC-9 cockpit builders showed up on the page. We are now working together, across borders and help each other the best we can, despite our different entry angles.

We have also received free assistance from a skilled programmer in Spain, which owns the company Encore solutions, which among other things deals with professional flight simulators.

Free support we have also received from Leonardo Software house in Italy, which has made ​​the great MD-80 aeroplane software, which I use as a platform for the simulator.

The most complicated component of the MD- 80's cockpit is the throttle quadrant also called : the center console. From here you control: center gravity - flaps computer / trim / air brakes / flaps / fuel valves / throttle and reverser / bleed air , etc. Alone the flaps lever is quite clever furnished with 2 release levers to be operated both up and down.

I knew that if I was going to make a replica of this throttle quadrant, I could put many extra hours (months) in the project. So the plan was to obtain an original throttle quadrant and rebuild it to USB plug and play. Here I must look into the United States for parts because it is practically impossible to obtain plane scap in Europe.

Meanwhile, Frank and I would like to go inside a real cockpit and take some measurements, so we contacted the Danish Air Transport (DAT) because they then operated with an MD-87 and MD-83. ​​DAT told us that the cockpit could be our one day, it just had to fit in between the plane's daily operations. Thank you, DAT

We had now reached August 2009 and I was on the Motor Flying Club tour to Roskilde airshow, which by the way was a really great trip.

Here I saw my contact person from DAT: Jesper Rungholm. So I had to go and thank him personally for the permission to "borrow" a MD cockpit. These messurements we took in the cockpit will become an indispensable great help to us, because it is impossible to find the dimensions elsewhere and Boeing don't assist with drawings / dimensions.

When I talked to Jesper Rungholm, we also talked about the acquisition of the original cockpit parts, such as a center console. Just at this time DAT had a man in the United States to pickup a "new" MD 80, so Jesper Rungholm offered that if it was possible, DAT would obtaining and transporting parts back to the MD project. How many airline will offer such a service. A big thanks to DAT .

In late October 2009, there came an email from DAT, they had obtained a center console and it was in Denmark, along with their "new " MD-83. Many many thanks to DAT .

The time has gone with many small and large projects, and I have come much further than actually expected. A far from finished cockpit has given me and freinds a great deal of joy. A joy I also really wanted to share with other peoble. Hence came the idea to build the simulator inside a caravan, and this has completely change the simulator's potential, the simulator will now be brought out to the public, and thereby help to promote understanding and interest in aviation, in an unconventional, fun and interesting way.

I have also made a flight school section which will provide useful knowledge about aviation. A section to help fear of flying, topics for people interested in flying and more. It's all on the Danish website.

In time much more will eventually be build, and out in the future a quite complete cockpit, a replica of the original, will be ready for many more enjoyable flights for me, frends and the public.

Kind regards

Claus