Saturday, March 29, 2008

A cockpit? A cockpit!

It looks like a real cockpit....

This is the actual state of my cockpit. The flight engineers desk is installed and the lower instrument panel too. Also the main junction box panels (left of the F/E desk) are all finished and installed.

I discovered that the steering columns have been too short and it was not possible to sit and to put the feet on the pedals because the steering wheel was in the way. This turned out to be a mayor problem because it did not help just to make the columns longer, the wheels would touch the glare shield.
The problem was that the columns in the real Connie are not just moving forth and back but forward/down and bachwards/up because the turning point is located under the pilots seats and not directly below the column vertical axis.

So I had to rebuild almost the entire steering unit. I made the columns a bit longer and added a different hinge to move the turning point backwards. I think this will solve the problem.... it must, because it was a lot of work to do.

The next step will be to re-install the unit and I hope it's good now.