Author's posts
Mar 10 2025
How to convert a Boeing Lightplate to LED Backlighting
Boeing 737 classic aircraft use cockpit panels which are backlighted by incandescent bulbs. They are driven by 5V (not 28V like all other bulbs, so please don’t burn them, it happened to me). The bulbs are connected in parallel, they are directly soldered onto a PCB and fit through holes into the semi-transparent backplate. Unfortunately, …
Mar 08 2025
How to transform a Korry 318 annunciator from a 28V to a 5V device
Korry annunciators are used in many larger aircraft. Boeing often uses (or: used, e.g. in the Boeing 737 classic series) the Korry 318 annunciator. It consists of two 28V white light bulbs (Type 387 T1 3/4 Midget Flanged). The annunciator can be pressed, activating a switch to test the annunciator’s light bulbs. The light bulbs …
Mar 27 2024
Flight Simulator 1.0
Not many words needed. I’m happy to show you some pictures of my first flight yesterday on 26 March 2024 with the newly rebuilt Flight Simulator Home Cockpit, now featuring a second flight management computer and the newly built aft overhead panel, and, and, and … also many thanks for the VACC (VATSIM Controllers in …
Mar 27 2024
Back to Step 1
After having almost completely mounted the Sim in a newly built wooden house including a curved 210 degree screen and three projectors, a small metal part of the mechanical rudder pedals broke. Since the B737 sim is mounted in a real cockpit enclosure, there is no way to access the rudder pedal from the front. …
Aug 16 2023
Project Winedigger
The whole thing has actually started in 2007 at my bachelor’s party with friends when we buried three rather expensive bottles for 10 years about 1 m deep in a forest in central Switzerland. Guess what: the wine has aged perfectly under really adverse conditions since the bottles were subject to seasonal temperature changes of …
Nov 13 2022
A little update
As I concentrate on programming and hardware work you are not getting too much news here from the project. You can always visit and see yourself. What has happened: Completely moved all hardware from my attic to the real cockpit shell Wired 3 headsets and got them working with online flying on VATSIM MIP almost …
Feb 20 2022
How to move Heavy Stuff without Wheels
I wanted to rotate the cockpit shell horizontally by 90 degrees (you may have read the article where we already had rotated it by 90 degrees vertically). The thing weighs around 600 kg and wheels are not an option when rotating in a circle. The idea was: build skis of wooden plates and use frying …
Jan 25 2022
Fitting Custom Screens to the MIP
The journey has just begun, or as we say in german: Der Weg ist das Ziel. After adapting the nicely made upper part of the Boeing 737-800 MIP from SISMO Soluciones to the original Boeing 737-300 MIP stand below (see this post), the next task was to outfit the whole thing with proper electronics. I …
Jan 25 2022
Making of the Integrated Standby Flight Display
The Integrated Standby Flight Display (ISFD) is used in all newer Boeing 737 jets. This instrument is thought to be a backup when all other (now digital) flight instruments fail. In the real aircraft it is a fully independent (in terms of power and sensors) and rather small replacement of the Primary Flight Display (PFD) …
Nov 20 2021
Smartphone Battery now lasts 6 days
I have wiped the Fairphone OS (a standard Android) of my 4 year old Fairphone 2 and replaced it with the Lineage OS 18 without any google play and google play services. The problem with this solution is that you have to search your apps by hand and many of the apps still depend on …