ABOUT THIS PROJECT

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Hi, I'm Scott Bouchard, I'll explain why I thought building this simulator was a pretty neat idea.

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MOTIVATION

I am an engineer, but have made it a goal to not stick to one flavor of engineering, as diversity keeps life interesting. I currently work as a control system engineer for industrial gas turbines, and dabble in renewable energy projects too. Looking at engineering jobs, most require a degree, which I don't have, and also C or similar programming experience, which I also didn't have.

Gaining a degree is no walk in the park, and with a young family, there was no way I was going to be able to commit the time to it. So, to improve my CV in a way that could fit around work and family, I figured that learning how to program was the best way forward.

The type of learner that I am, I needed a real application - I struggle with hypothetic scenarios. I discovered Arduino boards, and after making an LED blink on and off (and a few other projects), I wanted to do something a little more...

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SIMULATOR PROJECT

Thinking up a project, I have always had a passion for vintage aviation, and had some bits of cockpit hardware from my days of voluntarily restoring, maintaining, and operating the preserved T5 Lightnings XS452 and XS458↗ at Cranfield.

I had never been a gamer and still don't class myself as a gamer, but I saw a flight simualtor as a source of constantly changing data that I could read, interpret and do something interesting and fun with.

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FLIGTHGEAR

I stumbled across Flightgear↗ flight simualtor (FGFS) as I searched online for a simualtor that was easy to interface with, and as an added bonus, it is open-source which appealed to my love of Linux and all things FOSS / FLOSS / GNU.

I began with casually carrying out some simple experiments with FGFS and Arduino, set up a potentiometer based stick with trim hat, made a basic potentiometer throttle and a switch box for canopy, flaps, air brakes and undercarriage. Then with some help from David Hudach in the USA, managed to take data from FGFS and control some basic indicators.

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WHY A TWO-SEAT LIGHTNING?

I realised during 'Fest 19, that as impressed as I was at the cleverness of making some real cold-war jet cockpit indicators respond to a flight simulator, it failed to "wow" the public. People were more impressed with whole panels and cockpits, even if they did nothing, so in order to make it look more impressive, a panel was required, but which aircraft..?

My main background in aviation is volunteering for about 20 years on the T Mk.5 Lightning, so have experience, some documantation, and some parts already.

Another reason to go for a post-war aircraft is that most of the equipment has an electrical interface, not pneumatic, hydraulic or mechanical. But also not so modern that we'd be into data communications, and reverse-engineering communications protocols.

I believe it to be a unique project as the few Lightning simulators already in museums are based on single-seat aircraft, this would (I currently believe) be the first one where the experience could be shared with someone else.

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DOING IT THE HARD WAY

As documented under preservation, I am keen not to modify or damage any of the original equipment in use. So, this means understanding the interface between the equipment and the aircraft. Some of these interfaces are documented, but most are having to be reverse-engineered.

This is another aspect of this project making it unique, as there are not many flight simulator projects done this way. You can buy an off-the-shelf system and modify your indicators to use it, or alternatively make a wooden cutout panel and mount a computer monitor behind it to display the indicators graphically - both of these methods work effectively for quickly building a simulator, but they do not achieve my goals of learning and preservation.

This approach I'm taking has its challenges as no two types of equipment have the same interfaces, so custom electronics and software need to be developed for each individual part; but I started this project with the aim to educate myself in elecrtronics and software... ie: it's never been about taking the easy way.