I am wondering if I am thinking about making more work for myself than is justified.
The backstory is that my flight school, in which I am a board member, has just inherited a partially complete Glasair kit. The gentleman that started the project put, as he said, around 3000 hours into the project, before age and health made him think about donating the project.
The instrument panel, while not yet mounted in the aircraft fuselage, is pretty well put together. I am wondering if building some sort of test jig is worth the trouble of doing some kinds of testing before the whole panel is installed.
Now, in terms of experience, I spent 35 years as an electronics design engineer, designing and building printed circuit boards with embedded cpu's and FPGA's. I still have current software tools to do the job. Also, just a couple of years ago, I earned my A&P certification and have spent some time working in small aircraft installing and replacing instruments. My experience tells me that working on an installed instrument panel in a small aircraft is not the easiest thing to do.
Finally, about a year ago I took a venerable (25 year old) Precision Flight Controls flight console, complete with pedals, Yoke and levers and replaced the electronics with an Arduino single board microprocessor and connected it to a modern computer with a modern graphics card, and I now run X Plane 11 on 5 monitors.
Now, realizing that analog instruments require analog inputs, etc. I am wondering if it is worth making a simulation system to test the instrument panel or if just installing it is the way to go. Obviously, I could hook up a 12V (or is it 24V, I don't know yet) supply to the instruments and just see if something smokes. But I am wondering if it pays to do anything else while before the instrument panel is actually installed?
All opinions are welcome.
Thank You
Tom
The backstory is that my flight school, in which I am a board member, has just inherited a partially complete Glasair kit. The gentleman that started the project put, as he said, around 3000 hours into the project, before age and health made him think about donating the project.
The instrument panel, while not yet mounted in the aircraft fuselage, is pretty well put together. I am wondering if building some sort of test jig is worth the trouble of doing some kinds of testing before the whole panel is installed.
Now, in terms of experience, I spent 35 years as an electronics design engineer, designing and building printed circuit boards with embedded cpu's and FPGA's. I still have current software tools to do the job. Also, just a couple of years ago, I earned my A&P certification and have spent some time working in small aircraft installing and replacing instruments. My experience tells me that working on an installed instrument panel in a small aircraft is not the easiest thing to do.
Finally, about a year ago I took a venerable (25 year old) Precision Flight Controls flight console, complete with pedals, Yoke and levers and replaced the electronics with an Arduino single board microprocessor and connected it to a modern computer with a modern graphics card, and I now run X Plane 11 on 5 monitors.
Now, realizing that analog instruments require analog inputs, etc. I am wondering if it is worth making a simulation system to test the instrument panel or if just installing it is the way to go. Obviously, I could hook up a 12V (or is it 24V, I don't know yet) supply to the instruments and just see if something smokes. But I am wondering if it pays to do anything else while before the instrument panel is actually installed?
All opinions are welcome.
Thank You
Tom
