Story
Introduction
In September of 2006 I, (Peter), and my friend Moritz, were in Naples, Florida. Besides the Sun, we also enjoyed our first hours in a brand new D40 equipped with the latest G1000. Before this we had only heard second hand about it. Once past the initial euphoria, it was clear to us that the G1000 was truly amazing, the stuff only airline pilots could dream about. But, you must be able to operate it in your sleep, otherwise, several thousand feet above the ground is the wrong place for this classroom!Subsequently We need a simulator.
The Beginning
The good news: MS Flight Simulator has the G1000.The bad news: a computer keyboard and mouse has nothing to do with the reality of flying. In terms of realistic, compatible hardware not so much.
First Attempt
I grabbed a soldering pen and built one myself.
It was great and it worked. I studied hard, then I ran off to Florida to get my 40 hours of IFR training. My instructor was amazed at how well I comprehended the G1000. As far as the rest, I'm not so sure anymore.
After so much time in this amazing plane, I couldn't really get any more excitement out of my cobbled wooden prototype sitting on my desk.
Second Attempt
I'm in need of an electronic specialist, Tosti. For something as simple as I needed, he's awfully hard to get.A solution for that problem
come up with something so off-the-charts so that Tosti can't resist to help! Here is our CAN-bus, using as many microprocessors as possible and SMD parts.
Problem: we told too many people about our idea. Now they, too, wanted something like we had.
The Result: building it ourselves won't work. Unfortunately, we still have to make a living and specialists would probably do a better job, anyway.
So, we changed our plans and decided that all of the parts had to be factory made.
Prototype
There isn't much to say.Tosti pulled out the hot air soldering gun and put it together. Then, Frank Bertag from KEK GmbH designed and built the stainless steel case.
All three key panels, the USB-CAN-control and the 10.4" display are all now in a free standing stainless steel housing now, if we could only deal with the stupid fingerprints.
Limited-lot production
The rest was pretty simple (that's a joke). We searched for a specialist, found him, explained everything, and after one year we finally had a beautiful simulator. Special thanks to Thomas Stehle who put the icing on the cake: he installed the knobs which were nowhere to be had. Believe it or not, I finally found these knobs 100 meters from my home in St. Gallen (Switzerland). With their acquisition, the simulator was completed.