My Head In The Clouds

As of today I have something approaching 400 posts and a rep score approaching 60. I have to admit that at times it has been a struggle to earn much. I have some posts that have certainly made some money. So I like everyone am looking to refine things and find my market.

So while I am figuring the aforementioned out I thought I might share what I plan to do with the money that I earn from Steemit. I have become something short of addicted to using my flight simulator and I am in the process of building a replica cockpit.

I spend way too much time not sleeping. I have horrible insomnia. As the summer is changing into fall and then winter the nights are getting really long. Some times I get anxiety in the evenings anticipating another long dark night. I decided a while ago that I had to find a healthy coping mechanism. I was not going to let this beat me into suffering every night. So I started looking for things to immerse myself in. Some of the results of this are my postings on here.

I can only spend so much time doing the graphics work that I post on here and TV looses it's appeal in the face of the anxiety that I get. So again I wanted to find things that I can immerse myself in. It is turning out that I can spend hours a flight between various places and have started to get pretty technical with the flying.

The Challenge

Right now I have a three monitor setup that is great because it gives me a pretty wide view out of my cockpit windows. I have added all sorts of custom scenery and plugins to my X-Plane 10 setup. I want to get to the point that I can fly with live air traffic controllers through the VATSIM network. VATSIM is pretty cool because it allows flight simulator pilots the ability to play with other people who act as controllers at a large variety of airports all over the world.

One thing about VATSIM is that they take flight procedures very seriously. So if you would get in trouble for it in real life you are likely to in VATSIM. So it makes following instructions from controllers vitally important. These instructions are just like what you would get in the real world. "American flight 817 turn left heading 270, climb and maintain 15,000 feet." Or perhaps, "United 312, you are cleared for landing on runway 08". You get the idea.

A lot of the time we fly under what is known as, "instrument flight rules", or IFR. To operate a modern aircraft under IFR requires the pilot to to manipulate a lot of different functions on the airplane. It is far more than just throttle, stick and rudder. I generally fly an Airbus a380. It is pretty much the biggest thing out there in passenger transportation. It is even larger than a Boeing 747.

In the picture below you can see the cockpit of an A380. You have to control things like radios, autopilot, gps, flaps, and the flight management computer. This makes a cockpit a very busy place. There is a lot to do. It is sometimes refered to as pilot workload.

This is particularly true if you are trying to manipulate all of these functions using a mouse, keyboard and Xbox 360 game controller. I have some of the main functions that you would expect mapped to my controller and have to rely on remembering hotkeys on the keyboard or using the mouse to control things like the radio and autopilot. This is something that does not work out to be a very smooth or fast way of doing things. More often than not, I can't do it in a timely enough manner to meet the demands of ATC.

The Solution

I really only need a few core pieces of the puzzle to make the difference. I think if I had better flight controls and a few of the basic panel items from the cockpit I would be able to fly better and hit the mark. The amount of money that you can spend on building out your simulator cockpit can be phenomenal. There are people who have litterally spent tens of thousands of dollars making their simulators almost like the real thing.

To build something like this is out of the question for me. I don't have a spare room in my house so building a full sized replica is not going to happen. Instead I am looking to build something that is pretty scaled back. I really just need to improve my flight controls and have an autopilot, radio, etc. I am looking to build something like the panel that is below.

Unlike the purists I am not trying to re-create the A380 or any other specific aircraft at this point. I am really looking to make my flights more manageable. So instead of a budget of thousands of dollars I am looking into a budget of several hundred.

This is the basic panel setup that I am hoping to put together. The only big addition to this would be flight and throttle controls. On this subject I am at a little bit of a logger head. I have an option between a traditional flight yoke and throttle quadrant as seen below.

The other option would be to go with what is known as HOTAS, Hands On Throttle-And-Stick. This is more likely to be the option that I am going to go with as it has many more assignable buttons, switches and knobs that I can use to control the numerous functions of my big aircraft. I sort of feel that this gives me the widest possible configuration at the lowest price.

Your Patronage Is Appreciated

So this is my humble task. To finance my cockpit needs and to help keep me occupied through the long nights this winter. I don't think it is an unrealistic goal to earn the amount of money that is required to make my small dream come true. I simply ask that if you are willing to throw me a few upvotes on content you appreciate, perhaps follow me, lead me to others who might be interested in my body of work or commission some graphics work from me to please do so.