ālea iacta est ("the die has been cast")

The idiom "Crossing the Rubicon" means to pass a point of no return, and refers to Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon River in 49 BC without disbanding his Legion, which was considered an act of war. According to historian Suetonius, Caesar uttered the famous phrase ālea iacta est ("the die has been cast").

I then started to figure out how to interface more hardware to the thing. I had a Desktop Aviator Model 1010E which I was using as an electrical panel (see below). I figured it would be easy to tear it's guts out and interface the switches into the new panel! The mechanical part was easy, and just required drilling holes in the panel and screwing the switches in. The soldering turned out to be a much bigger chore. The factory wires need to be extended to make the thing work, and all of them were thin as a Frog Hair. It is also possible to melt plastic switch housings with a soldering iron. After a great amount of frustration, and teaching my kids new swear words, I got everything soldered and interfaced into the panel, and everything programmed through FSUIPC. I could now flip switches and stuff happened! My wife, children and dogs were unimpressed, but I felt like Orville and Wilbur at Kitty Hawk!

I got a little cocky and changed the Master switch to a Cessna factory split switch that I found at aircraftspruce.com . I also bought a toggle switch the same size as the others at Radio Shack and split out the Beacon and Strobe light functions onto discrete switches.

In the beginning there was MDF...

Welcome to my blog. I hope to use this thing to have a visual track of the progress I have made, and will continue to make on my Cessna simpit.

I have always dreamed of flying, and had some amazing opportunities to see a great deal of Alaska from small aircraft. Money does not currently allow me to follow my dream of getting my real life license, so I decided to build my own cockpit in my home.

I have been looking and coveting other builders cockpits on some great websites like www.mycockpit.org, and always marveled at how sophisticated some of the builds were. I also thought there was no way in Hell I was ever going to be able to do something like that. I am not a computer programmer, nor an electrician, nor a CAD specialist, nor possessing a workshop full of tools or an endless pocketbook to finance any of the above. In short, I am woefully unprepared for most phases of this process.

The first step was to decide what I wanted to build. Most of my time flying in Flight Simulator X has been in small Cessnas. I do enjoy flying the Goose and Beaver, but had to rule them out, because both have features that were beyond my perceived ability to build. The Cessna aircraft tend to be simpler, with flat panels and no frills; everything a first time builder needs to take the big leap.

I had been flying from a desktop setup that had a CH products yoke, Saitek proflight throttle, CH rudder pedals and a Natural Point Trackir unit. I thought I was Charles Lindbergh, Wiley Post and Pappy Boyington all rolled into one!

Then came the fatal day...

I found a CAD file online that I was able to have made into a 1:1 scale template for a Cessna 172 Main Instrument panel. I have watched enough New Yankee Workshop on TV to know that if I had a pattern, I Could Build One! (I also knew that I needed to read and understand all of the safety rules for working with my power tools, and to never forget the most important item of safety gear...safety glasses. Thanks Norm!)

A trip to a local print shop with my cad file, $7 in printing fees, A half sheet of 3/4" MDF, some spray on adhesive for the template, two bent jigsaw blades and a great deal of eyerolling from the Mrs. later, and I was the proud owner of a Genuine, Certified, Grade A Main Instrument Panel. I later created a $1.95 glareshield around the top edge with some foam pipe insulation I uploaded the plans to the Download section at www.mycockpit.org, for anyone crazy enough to be interested in copying my folly! Caveat emptor...