Dec 01 2020

From old make new …

The COVID-19 lockdown during spring with good weather was the start of a major refurbishing action of all cockpit interior parts. This included removing 2-3 layers of paint by sanding, filling and remodeling broken parts, sanding again, filling scratches, sanding again, painting with primer and with the RAL 7011 (gray) and 9001 (beige) Boeing colors and finishing with matte paint. The interior was finished a few days ago in November 2020 and thus took some time. The thing could now be sold again as a brand new B737-300 cockpit …

Reworking interior parts. Left: before after 30 years of use; middle: after paint removed and while remodeling broken parts; right: finished with RAL 9001 color.

Sanding, scraping off paint in the interior of the Cockpit … and …

… finally finished with almost “living room quality”. Includes an entry carpet and an anti-slip grip cover which would otherwise find its use on a skateboard.

Next in line is piping work for the air conditioning outlets in front of, above and behind the pilots. Then we’ll proceed to thermal insulation (likely with natural sheep wool) and start planning the electrical wiring of cockpit lighting and placement of computers, power supplies and audio equipment. Maybe the design of the minibar will have priority.

Oct 18 2020

4 Apple Varieties on a Single Tree

Planting season has also started (see last post on porcino season). Thanks to Peter Coendet’s professional connection to Glauser’s Bio Baumschule in Noflen (BE) we planted an organically grown apple tree with four varieties of apples on a single tree. Three of them (from left to right Ariwa, Topaz, Opal, Julia is missing) are seen on this picture:

Our last Saturday thus involved digging, planing and a small party around the tree:

We also planted a new row of rasberries (Primalba, Amira and Regina) a grape (Vitis Ferninand Lesseps) and a cornelian cherry (Schönbrunner Gourmet Dirndl):

Sep 13 2020

Porcino Season has startend!

In a place not far away culinaric treasures of nature are growing, waiting to be picked …

Best enjoyed with other treasures oft nature, such as the Kuonen Muscat wine from Salgesch …

Aug 06 2020

Pitot probes and AOA Vanes mounted … Cockpit Minibar to be designed!

Thanks to Nick from the Airline Pilot’s Historical Society the Lufthansa B737-300 shell was outfitted with 4 Pitot Probes and 2 Angle of Attack vanes! Looks professional although these probes will never be used again.

Now to something more serious: I’ve found the perfect location for the Cockpit Minibar: just right to the jump seat there is a niche which perfectly fits a few bottles of Grappa and Vieille Prune as a reward after the heavy work of sim building or after a difficult landing (once the whole thing is finished in 15.75 years from now …):

Apr 19 2020

Forward Overhead Panel finished

This required quite some wiring and night shifts … and the rather important backlighting required some thinking and handcrafting as well. Result: almost ready to perform a regular startup procedure according to the checklist.

Apr 01 2020

On the Importance of proper Home Office Furniture & Clothing

Thanks to my colleague Jim Doyle from Desert Air Spares in California, two really neat Boeing 737 Ipeco J-Rail cockpit seats in working condition including headrests have arrived today. They are going to be refurbished and placed in the cockpit shell. But before that they play an important role to better suit body and soul in this long lasting home office situation …

I’d like to also express many many thanks to Patrick who provided the original office clothes including the full set of Boeing 737NG handbooks!

Mar 14 2020

Circuit Breakers and Overhead Panel

Circuit Breakers are mounted, an original Boeing fire extinguisher was delivered by Nick from Airline Pilot’s Historical Society and the forward overhead panel with components from OpenCockpits is in the works …

Jan 03 2020

XPIOCARDS is now XPCOCKPIT

We have moved our X-Plane Home Cockpit code repository from sourceforge to github. And it has a new name: xpcockpit.

It consists of four components:

  • XPServer, the X-Plane Plugin acting as a dataref provider to external clients
  • XPClient, a sample client to try out our famous dataref subscription method
  • XPUSB, the interface to USB-driven H/W interfaces from OpenCockpits and Leo Bodnar’s famous BU0836x/a boards
  • XPOpenGC, the revived OpenGC code now updated for B737 and A320

Try it out on: https://github.com/retostockli/xpcockpit/wiki

May 07 2019

Crypto Currencies kill our Planet

According to this article here the global production of crypto currencies consumes the same amount of electrical energy as entire Switzerland does.  This is around

60 Terawatthours per year.

This, dear friends of modern economy, is just about the silliest and weirdest thing that happens on our planet. We are talking about energy efficiency, decarbonization, de-nuclearization, and the like and some weird guys invent currencies which need heavy number crunching in order to be created.

I understand that printing money shouldn’t be an easy task. With energy, consumption is silly. Production from renewable energies is key. So how about linking the production of digital coins to the production of solar or wind power? The more PV modules or wind mills you put up and use for energy production, the more crypto currency you have on your account?

The effect of raising marginal costs per unit will be the same as with number crunching. The more renewables we will have, the less digital coins you will get per unit energy.

But please stop this silly number cruncing-based crypto currency!!!

 

May 07 2019

Lufthansa follows the 737 Reconstruction

The Lufthansa Company Archive became aware that I am reconstructing the Cockpit of their D-ABXA “Giessen” Boeing 737-330. Lufthansa was the first owner of the aircraft, starting in 1986 and flew it until 2001. They decided to publish a short Whatapp Story …

 

The funny part of the story is that I was not able to follow the story since I do not use Whatsapp at all.