A lot of work has been done in the last couple of weeks as I put my sim together in its new hanger.  Here is a pic of where it is at now.

Over the next few days I hope to fill in the blanks and post all the pictures and video I’ve taken to get it to here.

Well, the packers crated up and packed up my sim on Friday.  Won’t be seeing it again until probably the beginning of August by the time I find a place to live in Stuttgart, get settled, and have the household good delivered.

Oh well…  A lot of progress made over the last month or so, at the expense of family time, and other projects.  Now I have a couple of months to focus on the kids and our next adventure.

I’ll post updates as they happen.  I expect my two Prosimparts radio sets to arrive any day now.  Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do anything with them until I have the sim back up.

Well, finished up what I can and until my CNC is back up, I’m done.  Plugged everything in to see if it still worked.  For the most part, good to go.  Windows did strike back though.  Although I plugged EVERYTHING back into the same ports, on the same network, it appears that the Win7/WinXP networking bug bit me…  one of my systems refuses to play nice with the others.  I’ll have to work that.  Here’s a pic.

Anyone know how to change the color of the XP taskbar to black?

It’s been a long few weeks as I worked diligently to get the MIP to this point.  As I look to packing up for my move to Germany, I’ve been trying to take advantage of the ready access to materials here in the US.  That meant buying the steel adn other materials and building what I could, in sizes that would fit in a shipping lift van.  Still a few things to finish up on like the glareshield but everything else is done for the most part.  I hope to have the framework for my two seats built within the next week so they can be mounted properly.  The seats came out of a DC-10 as opposed to a B737 so they have a different mounting system.

The upper EICAS has been removed as I am still working some of the trim, and I haven’t dropped the screen into the FO CDU yet.  I still need to cut the holes and mount my sixpacks in the glareshield.  My CNC is down right now, but once it’s up, I’ll be making a faceplate that I can mount my CP Flight RS232 MCP and two EFIS into.  I can then finish the glareshield.

1.  I started by welding a framework to hold my FDS signature MIP.  To that I mounted my glareshield

2.  Next I built a side mount and cut and bent sheet metal to form the side panels

3.  I then built the CDU bay.  The rudder footrests are there for sizing.  That will be a future project.  Also powder coated the MIP.  The light panels are both made from scratch.  I’m very happy with how they came out, even though I really lacked some of the tools to shape the metal.

4.  The base is mod1.  The material for mod2 will travel with me to Germany and be built there.  It will be modular, sized and structured to support a shell.  Thanks for the plans, Nick. In this photo you can see the seat mounts.  Just behind the seats and pedestal you can see the aluminum stock that will be used for the seat rails.  These seats don’t use J-rails.  They slide back at an angle.  Once I have the aluminum framework done, I’ll mount the track guides to it.  I also still need to repaint the pedestal to NG specs.

Well…  that’s it for now!

1. Built the framework to house the MIP components and screens.
2. Mounted the glarewings to the MIP.  This has turned out much better than I thought, and much better than it was.  I picked up the glarewings from someone else and they were not only used, but not really complete.  I;ve had to devise ways to mount them.
3. Bent sheet metal into shape for the MCP/EFIS housing.  Came out OK.  Will need to add some internal bracing though.

Well, work began today in earnest to try to get my MIP upgraded from a solid 200 lbs of MDF to a more manageable sheet metal, steel and aluminum structure.  As I prepare to move to Germany, I have to really look at total weight of my toys…

I’ve been piddling with this for a while now and today I was able to devote 110% to it.  I was cutting, welding, and drilling like a fool.  Still didn’t get done, but I did manage to get through a good piece of it.  The challenges are trying to make all my odds and ends that I’ve collected over the years work together.

I’m running out of time to get this all done, and projects keep getting pushed (pedestal, overhead, yardwork) but it is important that I make max use of being in the US for acquiring materials as the cost is very prohibitive once I get to Europe.