Motivation (November 2009 – May 2009)
Since my childhood I have been interested in aviation, building lego airports, that sort of thing. In November 2008 a freind opened my eyes to X-Plane and that reopened the world of flight simulation to me which closed 8 years earlier when I had briefly tested Mircrosoft Flight Simulator 2000. Slowly I started to learn the basics of flying, autopilot use, the flight management system and aircraft systems. I purchased a joystick and later Saitek’s Pro Flight Yoke System. I was constantly looking for something new.
Initiation (May 2009 – July 2009)
When I stumbled on vasFMC in May 2009 I had found this “something new”. In their forums I found a thread where people posted pictures and links to their personal home cockpit projects which were powered by vasFMC. From these forums I found Christoph, a now good freind of mine who lives near Dusseldorf and is building an Airbus A330 cockpit (www.dalpi.de). Having someone like him on my e-mail list was extremely helpful for various reasons. First of all he had the experience and was able to answer many of my questions regarding the subject and second of all he provided me with his construction drawings which I used for building the basis of the cockpit. After returning from a month work experience in Holland I started the project on the 1st of July 2009.
Airbus First (July 2009 – December 2009)
Initially I was modelling an Airbus A330, inspired by the fact that I am european and that they simply build better aircraft 
. Through the latter part of 2009 I finished many crucial and basic parts such as the pedestal, main panel, glareshield and overhead support. Meanwhile I also got into contact with another fellow cockpit builder, Nigel, who coincidently started the project around the same time. By the end of 2009 I started to see some problems and found that a major change was inevitable.
Going Boeing (January 2010 – May 2011)
Modelling any Airbus posed various problems, which were solved easily by modelling a Boeing 737-800.
First of all there simply wasn’t an Airbus model for X-Plane that had the quality of system modelling that I was looking for. The x737, created by the EADT, has 100% authentically modelled overhead systems and autopilot, all easily controllable with Joystick controller cards through their smartly built custom plugin system.
Second of all the Boeing 737 itself features a lot of toggle switches instead of the numerous push buttons installed in an Airbus. As not every system, such as the IRS, is modelled in X-Plane these switches would become “dummy switches”; moving them would have no affect on the simulator but just step up the experience and make it “more realistic”. Pushing “dummy” push buttons looks stupid where as toggle switches are switched into an actual visible, physical different position and therefore have the possibility to control external LEDs that work as annunciators showing whether or not the “dummy system” is functioning or not. Subsequently the Airbus FCU uses extremely complex and expensive rotary knobs, which are not found on the Boeing 737 MCP.
Finally companies such as Opencockpits, CPFlight and many others produce more and cheaper Boeing 737 products as those for Airbus aircraft.
Back to the Best: Airbus (May 2011 Onwards)
It remains difficult to choose what aircraft of model, especially when only a few models are properly support within X-Plane. However, with continous new releases and updates more and more is possible. Given the universality of UFMC and xHSI I have flown the Boeing 737-800, Boeing 767-300ER, Boeing 747-400, McDonnell Douglas MD-11 and Airbus A330-200 in my home cockpit.
With the latest release of vasFMC 2.1 I intend to return to the best: Airbus. Back to the aircraft I love most: Airbus A330-200.
So that’s the history of the project, putting light to the events that led me to be where I am today: building a Home Cockpit Flight Simulator geared towards the A330-200 but with the ability to support other aircraft as well.
