I'm a big fan of simulations of the racing and flying kind. I can still remember the hundreds of hours put into Falcon 3.0 back in the days of DOS, when it was sometimes a miracle just to get a joystick working on the old 25mhz 386SX Tandy PC we owned. Over the (many) years since then, the thought had always been going through my mind that I'd like to build a cockpit to enhance and add elements of immersion to my sim experiences. Now with the release of DCS Warthog, I'm finally going to start down the road to creating a fairly accurate and fully interfaced A-10C sim cockpit.
At this very early stage nothing is particularly finalized. I don't know what my visual system will be, what method of I/O I'll use to interface the panels and switches, or even how I'll get all the electrical stuff taken care of considering that I have no formal electronics background so to speak. But I have the "interwebs" and it's vast fountain of sometimes helpful, other times confusing, and sometimes downright foolish content right here at my fingertips. Better yet there is an ever larger growing community of helpful and dedicated sim enthusiasts who all share the same common desire to get away from the keyboard and mouse and get closer to living that dream that 99.9% of us will likely never achieve in real life, be it splashing bogeys at 40,000 feet or turning in world record laps at Spa or the 'Ring.
That first time sitting in the sim, ramp starting a cold dead aircraft while never touching a keyboard or mouse will be a crowning achievement for me and everything that comes after that will just be icing on the cake. This is going to be a learning experience, an exercise in frustration at times, there will likely be hate and discontent, but once things start coming together the end will justify the means.
First things first, a rough design of the front instrument panel.
