Cockpit light

If you fly by night you know that it is very dificult to see the landscape outside of the windows. You can trick the monitor but the result is always bad looking. To enhance the situation you can think of turning off all the light and fly in a dark room. This strategy works of course but it is very difficult to find the keys of the keyboard or, even worst, you can't write down notes while flying online. Well, I don't know you but I have to write down al least metars, radio frequencies and take off clearances.

I agree that the problem of the lighting is temporary because when all the controls will be implemented at hardware it will not be needed anymore to find the keys of the keyboard. But what until then?

I thought about this problem for a long time and arrived to the following conclusion. I need a light that can be turned on and off independently of the simulator and maybe later on integrated with the 767 light switch. The light should be strong enough to allow writing notes and reading the keyboard but not too strong to reduce the visibility of landscape details flying by night.

I bought a couple of blue led strips and positioned in the upper right and left side of the closet. They are turned on and off by an apposite switch positioned below the table.

The following picture shows the environment while flying:

You might easily find it kitsch but for me the final effect is quite good: no artificial light reflected in the two screens, lightning is soft and relaxing but strong enough to read the keyboard or write down notes.

A possible next step could be that of integrating the lighting to the 767 cockpit. The two 24 leds strips needs 12V power that I already have in the power supply. The SIOC software already catch the events of the cabin light switch but up to now it only sends the command to the simulator. It would be possible to close a 5V output line that in turn powers on the leds with the help of a raleigh or something like that. It is something I will think about...

Last but not least the price. I payed the two strips of 24 blueleds, a 12V dedicated power supply, cables and the switch around 50 EUR. Half an afternon was the time to mount the hardware in the closet.

New radio and MCP panel

The refactoring the radio and MCP panelsis finally completed. You can see a snapshot of the previous situation in this post. The radios were in the left side in two white wodden frames. The MCP and the EFIS were below the two monitors in a very big wodden box bought from Ikea a lot of time ago.

The idea was to have a new box with the EFIS and the MCP in the upper side and the radios at the bottom.The new panel is shown by the following picture.

As you can see the new panel is much more compact. The little screwed panel in the upper left side is intended to contain some buttons controlled via opencockpit. That panel is not as wide as I hoped so I think I will put there not more then 4 buttons. For sure it will contain the master switch and the toga.

Just behind the webcam there is the power switch and another switch to close the contacts of the dip switches of the CPFlight MCP for upgrading the firmware.

The wood is painted with a water paint and the color is RAL7043. The new CPFlight radios have almost the same color of the panel while the old ones, the MCP and the EFIS, are quite different. However the final result is not bad and for sure much better then the original situation.

Yesterday night I made my first flight with the new panel, from EHAM to LIMC. I took this photo while climbing to final FL310 under Brussel CTR:

You can see the panel back lighted. In the left screen the VC and in the rigth monitor IVAP, the FMC and the radio panel. Most of the time, I use the left monitor to browse the charts.

Just upon the rigth screen you can see the three leds of the cabin light, the read and white beacons from the opencockpits light panel.