Hi from Malax, Finland. And how many are we?

I was just wondering, how many are we that are building a cockpit based on @Karls designs? Do you have an idea of a ballpark number as we speak Karl?

Anyway...

Hi from Malax, Finland :) I think I already said hi at some point but an update is never wrong.

I have been wanting to build a cockpit since the early 2000's when I bought my first interface card from Opencockpitsim as I was studying in Sweden. Cost has always been an issue, and with the advent of 3D printers and especially since I found this fantastic site with Karl's ingenious designs I realized it should be doable now.

I'm currently a stay at home dad with our first daughter who is 2½ now, and this has given me some extra time to build and tinker, but also made my budget quite constrained again. Although I'm a bit hampered by having a 2½ yo co-pilot that is not sharing my sim-passion to the same extent, I have managed to get some panels together between home base assignments. I also bought a small cnc some years ago and just assembled it waiting for the courage to delve into that pot of g-code soup.

I started by building the $38 MCP, had a break for about a year and now recently I have started building the FMC which should be ready in a week or so. I have also made some of the other small panels for the MIP, and next step after the FMC is ready is to create the MIP frame and faceplate and start building it up.

I bought the plans for the MTU but today realized the cost of getting all parts, and the complexity of it so I have reconsidered and will build the Saitek version of the throttle unit as a start. However I made an excel sheet for the MTU parts list that hopefully will be useful for someone. Get it here

My plan is to run X-plane simply because I like the Zibo mod and the sim is mature enough for a cockpit. FS2020 would be nice eventually but SimVim and X-plane will have to do at this stage. I have managed to wire up parts of the MCP as a proof of concept and got it working fine. SimVim has its limitations but is quite easy to grasp without having to fiddle with all "The bits in the byte" ;)

I have also made some modifications for some small parts of the sim, see this thread, and designed some own panels. I work with Fusion and my favourite slicer for the Ender3 is Superslicer - a quite capable fork of Prusaslicer. It works great with my Ender 3. So-That's how far I've come.

Wishing all the very best, I really like this community. I'm at Instagram @Thehighway78 where I post my build progress - though that account is not strictly only for my sim so you might see pictures of cats, a 100yo wooden boat, an equally old house and the occasional Christmas dinner.

Good luck all and happy building!

/Joachim