That's looking great so far!
I started a paper airplane kit (card stock) of an F-14 and worked on it Sunday. A fun distraction from a screen for a few hours on the weekends. I built an Mi24 and now working on the VF84 F14. The wings are supposed to sweep back too. its been quite complicated so far.
AV-8B cockpit build
Moderator: RLG MGMT Team
Re: AV-8B cockpit build
Ohh man, more and more you get done the more and more I cant wait to see the finish product.... Looking good!
Like Creeper, Ill have to stick to my airplane "crafts" - Lego on my side. Im hooked.
Like Creeper, Ill have to stick to my airplane "crafts" - Lego on my side. Im hooked.
Re: AV-8B cockpit build
Thanks. It is definitely going to take a long time! I only get a few hours each week to work on it. I found a supplier for the real seat cushion and got a quote. At $5999 for 1 unit, I will have to take a pass. None are available currently on any of the places and resources I have. So... I am going to have to make one. I have a block of dense cushion foam on the way, as well as fabric, dacron, and basting tape. And yes, I actually know how to use a sewing machine. One of those skills I learned in middle school that is no longer taught in schools today. It will be a few weeks before I can get to it but I am excited about it. Hopefully it doesn't look like crap!
Re: AV-8B cockpit build
I completed the seat cushion. It ain't the best, but it is not bad having never made a seat cushion before and not touching a sewing machine in like 30 years.
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Re: AV-8B cockpit build
Thats great Xpen.... like riding a bike eh...lol
Looks good and if anyone tries to critique your sewing tell em you'd be more than willing to break that sewing machine out and sew their lips shut.
Love how this is coming along.
Looks good and if anyone tries to critique your sewing tell em you'd be more than willing to break that sewing machine out and sew their lips shut.
Love how this is coming along.
Re: AV-8B cockpit build
Did a bunch of work this week on the ejection seat. Finally, got some paint on things! I still have a long way to go. Believe it or not, I still have structural pieces to build and lots and lots of details to make. I have also become acquainted with a Harrier mechanic (used to be active duty USMC) that is now a civilian contractor still working on Harriers. He has a real ejection seat in his garage and lots of parts and has offered to send some my way. Could get interesting.
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Re: AV-8B cockpit build
Thats so cool... love the updates.
Wonder what parts he's willing to send to you? That's a score.
Wonder what parts he's willing to send to you? That's a score.
Re: AV-8B cockpit build
I have not done much physical building lately as I have been working on a few other things. I don't know if I mentioned this, but early this year I started the OpenHarrier project on Facebook. We now have 49+ Harrier cockpit builders working together, sharing knowledge, designs, and files. Recently one of the guys in our group reached a point where he needed to build the glareshield which I had already modeled in FreeCAD. He needed a way to break that into pieces, flattened or unwrapped so they could be cut out of 1/8" thick sheets of ABS plastic. So yesterday I went to work on producing plans for him in both A0 and A3 sheet sizes.
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Re: AV-8B cockpit build
Started working on some rough cuts for the front instrument panel this week. In one of these pictures you can see the two displays I am using for the MFD / DDI's, sans the button overlays which have not arrived yet. The white 3D printed UFC is a placeholder as I will need to design my own. That UFC model is from someone else and they made some dimensional errors. It is usable but not as accurate as I would like.
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Re: AV-8B cockpit build
A couple more hours spent today. Starting to look like something.
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Re: AV-8B cockpit build
Looking great! It's nice to have some time during the holidays to spend eh? My Mi24 model is coming along bit nowhere near as big a project as this home cockpit.
Re: AV-8B cockpit build
It's really looking good.
That's awesome. Thanks for sharing.
That's awesome. Thanks for sharing.
Re: AV-8B cockpit build
I built the platform / floor of my simpit today. I hope to frame out the side panels tomorrow. Now that things are coming together, it's easy to see how cramped I would be in the real thing since I am 6'6" tall. This was not unexpected. I was well aware that I would not be able to fit in a real Harrier with the canopy closed. Fortunately, I won't have a canopy!
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Re: AV-8B cockpit build
Started work on the left console. Sitting in the seat feels amazing. I can reach down and visualize where all the switches should be and it is comfortable.
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Re: AV-8B cockpit build
Thats really coming along now. Looks great.
Re: AV-8B cockpit build
I made a major discovery last night while looking at my CAD model that I have been working on that all of my Harrier sim pit building is derived from. For those of you who don't know, I was able to obtain a few reference measurements from the real SJU-4A ejection seat that were provided by a couple of guys who actually work on them. I can only assume the measurements they gave me were accurate, or at least close enough. Then I figured out a way to export the 3D model of the Razbam cockpit from DCS and import it into FreeCAD by way of an old version of Blender that had a no-longer maintained importer/exporter extension that worked with some (but not all) models from DCS. It happened to work with the Harrier's cockpit model. My goal was to load it into FreeCAD and use it as a reference model while I model up all of the construction geometry I need in order to construct my scale cockpit. One issue with importing the model into FreeCAD is that there is no scaling information with the imported Harrier model, so when you load it in initially, it's size is tiny... it's like the size of a postage stamp! So, what I did was scale the Razbam cockpit mesh up trying to get it to match the known dimensions that I had of the ejection seat. In theory, when the inside width of the ejection seat from the Razbam model matches the inside width of the ejection seat model I had so far built using the dimensions I already had, the cockpit would be scaled correctly. At least that is what I had hoped. I am aware that Razbam actually used a 3D scanner on the inside of a real Harrier and used the geometry data from that 3D scanner as the basis for their cockpit model. My assumption is that it would be accurate if scaled correctly. Anyway, last night I was looking at my Winwing MFD displays and comparing it with the opening I had designed in the front instrument panel to accommodate the displays. Something was just not right. The opening was far too big!
I actually noticed this a few weeks ago but didn't really pay much attention to it. I kind of ignored it for awhile. But it was bugging me somewhere in the back of my brain. Last night I had a few moments to think about it a little more. I was pretty sure the Winwing MFD's that I bought are designed to be pretty accurate in dimensions for the F-18, and I knew the Harrier and the F-18 use the same left/right screens, but I measured them anyway and got a width of 6.5". I then measured the opening in my FreeCAD model, and the width was 7.5". Uhhh.... that's not good. I did some research and confirmed that the width should indeed be 6.5". I reached out to one of the other Harrier cockpit builders who 3D printed his MFD faces and asked him what the width of his MDF is. Sure enough, 6.5". Okies. I'm a little off. That likely means my ENTIRE FreeCAD model is larger than it should be! Well... that's a pretty big discrepancy.
I think I should have taken more effort to ensure I had scaled the Razbam cockpit more accurately, and maybe not assume the Razbam cockpit is 100% correct. (And who knows - it might still be accurate) Fortunately, I'm really not that far in my simpit build construction. I can take some corrective action. There are some options. First, I'm going to rescale the reference object and see if I can rescale all the parts that I've designed in FreeCAD. I know I can scale the reference object because it's just a mesh and that's no problem. Scaling the things I modeled in FreeCAD are not so easy, and I fully expect FreeCAD to not let me do that successfully. I will likely have to remodel much of it. This has to do with the fact that everything is based on 2D sketches that are then projected / extruded. Scaling may not work so well on a part that is made up of a whole bunch of sketches. And FreeCAD, for some inexplicable reason, likes to renumber the edges of a sketch when things get moved around, and other things that are referencing those edges (such as other sketches) suddenly become detached and your whole part is broken. PITA.
But I have not tried yet. I have already mostly built the seat, and I may leave that as it is for now. Or I might rebuild it later. Since I have the real back pads and head rest pads, I should have paid more attention that they seemed a little smaller than I thought they should be. Now... I understand why. DOH! Why did I not pay attention to that? The left console framing is okay because I still have yet to cut any openings for instruments and I still have to build the interior fuselage wall - that could be pushed in to the correct width. I haven't really done much on the front instrument panel and I can recut all those parts. For sure it's going to be tighter fit for this 6'6" pilot. The other option I have is to intentionally make it bigger. Things would be a little more spread out and I would have more room between components - although I would make the individual panels all at the correct scale. However, I think I would prefer a more accurate cockpit, so I may just rebuild everything except for the seat (and maybe address that later).
Anyway, although it's a bit of a goof on my part and setback for sure, I'm not discouraged. My FreeCAD skills have gotten a lot better since I started making the model over a year ago, and I can rebuild if if I need to, much faster than it took the first time and in some ways better than I had done before.
EDIT: I scaled the Razbam model to 0.91 percent of its previous scaling and that got the MFD's to the correct width of 6.5". Attached is a screenshot showing the difference between my "tub" and the Razbam "tub" after the Razbam tub is rescaled.
I actually noticed this a few weeks ago but didn't really pay much attention to it. I kind of ignored it for awhile. But it was bugging me somewhere in the back of my brain. Last night I had a few moments to think about it a little more. I was pretty sure the Winwing MFD's that I bought are designed to be pretty accurate in dimensions for the F-18, and I knew the Harrier and the F-18 use the same left/right screens, but I measured them anyway and got a width of 6.5". I then measured the opening in my FreeCAD model, and the width was 7.5". Uhhh.... that's not good. I did some research and confirmed that the width should indeed be 6.5". I reached out to one of the other Harrier cockpit builders who 3D printed his MFD faces and asked him what the width of his MDF is. Sure enough, 6.5". Okies. I'm a little off. That likely means my ENTIRE FreeCAD model is larger than it should be! Well... that's a pretty big discrepancy.
I think I should have taken more effort to ensure I had scaled the Razbam cockpit more accurately, and maybe not assume the Razbam cockpit is 100% correct. (And who knows - it might still be accurate) Fortunately, I'm really not that far in my simpit build construction. I can take some corrective action. There are some options. First, I'm going to rescale the reference object and see if I can rescale all the parts that I've designed in FreeCAD. I know I can scale the reference object because it's just a mesh and that's no problem. Scaling the things I modeled in FreeCAD are not so easy, and I fully expect FreeCAD to not let me do that successfully. I will likely have to remodel much of it. This has to do with the fact that everything is based on 2D sketches that are then projected / extruded. Scaling may not work so well on a part that is made up of a whole bunch of sketches. And FreeCAD, for some inexplicable reason, likes to renumber the edges of a sketch when things get moved around, and other things that are referencing those edges (such as other sketches) suddenly become detached and your whole part is broken. PITA.
But I have not tried yet. I have already mostly built the seat, and I may leave that as it is for now. Or I might rebuild it later. Since I have the real back pads and head rest pads, I should have paid more attention that they seemed a little smaller than I thought they should be. Now... I understand why. DOH! Why did I not pay attention to that? The left console framing is okay because I still have yet to cut any openings for instruments and I still have to build the interior fuselage wall - that could be pushed in to the correct width. I haven't really done much on the front instrument panel and I can recut all those parts. For sure it's going to be tighter fit for this 6'6" pilot. The other option I have is to intentionally make it bigger. Things would be a little more spread out and I would have more room between components - although I would make the individual panels all at the correct scale. However, I think I would prefer a more accurate cockpit, so I may just rebuild everything except for the seat (and maybe address that later).
Anyway, although it's a bit of a goof on my part and setback for sure, I'm not discouraged. My FreeCAD skills have gotten a lot better since I started making the model over a year ago, and I can rebuild if if I need to, much faster than it took the first time and in some ways better than I had done before.
EDIT: I scaled the Razbam model to 0.91 percent of its previous scaling and that got the MFD's to the correct width of 6.5". Attached is a screenshot showing the difference between my "tub" and the Razbam "tub" after the Razbam tub is rescaled.
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Re: AV-8B cockpit build
Here's the model corrected for position on the platform.
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Re: AV-8B cockpit build
Personally, I think you should scale it to a size that you will be comfortable. You'll want to be comfortable when you're flying, you know? It's recreation after all, and it will still be super accurate. You could probably just fill the voids to receive the MFDs with some kind of wood spacer or padding that looks real. It would make for a more difficult seating of these components, but then you would room to spread out. It sounds like you haven't cut the holes for instruments yet anyway, just holes for the MFDs?
Re: AV-8B cockpit build
Well, remember that I fly mostly in VR. The intent is for things to match up pretty closely as to where they are in VR so I can reach out and physically touch what I am seeing in VR. Building the cockpit bigger with components spread out would be a little weird. That said, it would jot be the end of the world.
At any rate, the point of this project was to get things as close to the real thing as possible. That said, I do think it will be a tight fit for me. Tonight I was checking scale with some of the side panels which I have known dimensions for. They don't match what the Razbam model says they should be. So... There has to be an error in the Razbam model. I am not sure what is inaccurate. My brain hurts so I am taking a break tonight and I am not even going to think about it anymore tonight.
At any rate, the point of this project was to get things as close to the real thing as possible. That said, I do think it will be a tight fit for me. Tonight I was checking scale with some of the side panels which I have known dimensions for. They don't match what the Razbam model says they should be. So... There has to be an error in the Razbam model. I am not sure what is inaccurate. My brain hurts so I am taking a break tonight and I am not even going to think about it anymore tonight.