Rich S., one of our customers, just sent us an e-mail with his newly constructed cockpit based around the Volair Sim chassis and the Volair Sim Avionics Panel.

Rich writes, “I just completed the latest (but never last!) touches to my sim.  I started it in July with the Volair chassis and seat, avionics panel and triple monitor stand.  They’re awesome and form the basis for my system. I have the Logitech yoke, rudder pedals, radio, multi and switch panels.  The TPM (throttle, propeller and mixture) controls, as well as the compass and carb heat controls are from SimMax.It. 

I modified the lower right blank panel cover to provide a mount for the TPM and carb heat.  The flight instruments are displayed on a Neewer 11.6 in. touchscreen running Air Manager with a Knobster to control the rotary knobs, such as the heading bug.  I cut out the steel slats from the center of the avionics panel to fit the touchscreen in.  The lower left screen is an iPad running ForeFlight in simulator mode, which provides a moving map for situational awareness. 

The large monitors are 27 in. P2719H Dells.  The computer is a Dell 8960 desktop with an i9 9900 chip and NVIDIA 2080 graphics card.  I’m running X-Plane 11 with the Cessna 172SP Skyhawk, as it is the plane I have been flying as a private pilot (at least until COVID-19 hit!). 

I installed two Arduino Mega 2560 boards, one for the compass running MobiFlight, and the second using SimVim for the carb heat, primer and Avionics Master 2 switch, which is missing from the Logitech switch panel.  The display shows a flight over Philadelphia with the custom scenery I downloaded from X-Plane.org.  I’ve also been shooting ILS and GPS approaches with the X-Plane G530 GPS.”

We think that Rich’s build represent an excellent example of customer creativity and clever customization based on the foundation that is provided by the Volair Sim components. Well done!