Instrument panel build, part #1

Now that I have all (well, almost all) of the components I need for the instrument panel for my CS-1 Stallion, I have started to build it. It has taken quite a while to figure out exactly where all the components should go, and I’m also not that great at building stuff, so I’ve been taking it slow.

I chose 1/2″ MDF for the panel because it seemed easiest to work with, and has a smooth finish, which I am hoping will be easy to paint when done. The plan is to paint it part black and part aluminum/grey, and add some fake rivets here and there to make it look more realistic.

Right now though, the task at hand is to lay out the panel. I’ve been sticking cardboard cutouts on to a piece of scrap plywood as a dummy panel to try out various ideas. At first, I was thinking of stacking all the Saitek panels in one column in the middle, and putting the rest on the co-pilot side, as shown below:

Mock-up of original panel layout, with all Saitek panels in the center column and GPS to the far right

However, after making a cardboard cutout of that, and sitting in front of it for a few minutes pretending to push the buttons, I decided to move things around. Now, the Saitek switch panel is under the yoke, and the GPS is top center. The yoke is a little higher than the original CS-1 Stallion plans, but it’s at a comfortable height for me. The GoFlight panels, and the two Saitek Instrument Panels will be on the co-pilot side.

Revised idea, with Switch Panel under the yoke, and the GPS top center

Of course the hard thing with this layout is the yoke shaft needs to protrude through the panel, in between the switch panel at the bottom, and the monitor at the top. The Saitek yoke does not disassemble that easily — it’s possible to remove the yoke and shaft from the base, but it’s kind of delicate, and not really suitable for rough handling on a workbench while I build around it. So, I think I will cut a slot down from the monitor cutout, save the piece of MDF that is removed, slide the yoke shaft down, fix it in place, and then put the piece of MDF back. I’m hoping that in the end, it will look just fine.

(Speaking of Saitek yokes, I found a site that describes a quick and easy way to improve the handling of the pitch and roll movements using just a screwdriver and a rubber band: http://www.sehlah.com/yoke.pdf. A few minutes well spent.).

With the new plan in mind, I started some of the cutouts. As you can see below, I’ve got the switch panel and multi-panel in place, and a cutout for the monitor. Still a lot of work to do, but at least this is a start.

First component in place!

A little more work done

Saitek Instrument Panels and Prepar3D

I tried out a Saitek Flight Instrument Panel (FIP) with Prepar3D 2.5 yesterday, and despite various claims that it should just work out of the box, it did not. It wasn’t hard to fix the problems, so I thought I’d post here for reference.

First, I downloaded the drivers from saitek.com, and installed those before plugging the panel in to any USB port. No problems there.

Then, plugged in the FIP; it came to life and showed a few ads for other Saitkek products. So far so good.

According to the documentation, all I had to do then was start up P3D, perhaps click “OK” to accept the driver, and the FIP would start showing some default instrument. However, nothing happened.

(1) Looking at P3D’s C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v2\exe.xml file, I can see the installation of the FIP driver added a section to launch SaiFlightSimX.exe on startup of the simulator:

<Launch.Addon>
  <Name>Saitek Panel(s) Plugin for FSX</Name>
  <Disabled>False</Disabled>
  <Path>C:\Program Files (x86)\Saitek\DirectOutput\SaiFlightSimX.exe</Path>
  <CommandLine>-run</CommandLine>
</Launch.Addon>

(2) I made sure that file existed, and it did. So, I tried to run SaiFlightSimX.exe manually by double-clicking it — it failed with some “side-by-side configuration” error. A ha! Luckily for us, the manifest file for SaiFlightSimX.exe is right there in the same folder, so I could see what dependencies it had; just open SaiFlightSimX.exe.manifest in any old text editor:

<dependentAssembly>
  <assemblyIdentity type='win32' name='Microsoft.FlightSimulator.SimConnect' version='10.0.61259.0' processorArchitecture='x86' publicKeyToken='67c7c14424d61b5b' />
</dependentAssembly>

Seems that SaiFlightSimX.exe depends on SimConnect version 10.0.61259.0. Looking at the “Add/Remove Programs” control panel showed that I had 10.0.60905.0 installed. So, I needed to find 10.0.61259.0 from somewhere…

(3) Luckily for us, Lockheed Martin includes all the flavors of SimConnect with P3D; they are all located under C:\Program Files (x86)\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v2\redist\Interface\<FSXVERSION>\retail\lib — the SimConnect.msi files are the installers I needed. After some web searches, I found that version 10.0.61259.0 corresponds to “FSX-SP2-XPACK”.

I installed SimConnect.msi using that package, and then checked the “Add/Remove Programs” control panel again to make sure I now have both 10.0.60905.0 and 10.0.61259.0 installed. Then, I tried to run SaiFlightSimX.exe manually again — this time there was no error, although nothing happened. But that’s OK, at least the .exe file starts without errors…

(4) Finally, I went back to P3D — bingo! This time, the FIP came to life showing an altimeter, and after that worked just perfectly.

Hopefully these instructions might be useful to someone else, although I’m sure the same or similar instructions are posted elsewhere.