First installation of the RMC710 Autopilot

Late last week we completed the first installation of our new RMC710 Autopilot System into a local customer's King Air C90 simulator that we've been helping with. The post previous to this one explained most of the panel's details but we've now uploaded a short video of it operating to our YouTube channel as well.

Throughout this build we've customised a few components here and there and thought that this might be a good opportunity to share some of them, seeing as the astute amongst you will no doubt have noticed some differences to previous builds we've been involved with.

One of the most immediately noticeable differences is the colour scheme, which is a medium grey colour. This is probably illustrated by the following panels, as photographed whilst still in our workshop.

 

 

Actually (and if you've watched the above video, rather obviously), the above MIPs were made for a previous customer and incorporated the addition of two small Marker Beacon Indicators, each positioned at the top left of their respective panels. A more detailed photograph of one of these is below, although because of the amount of light in our workshop - and no available tripod upon which to mount the camera - it's a little difficult to see the illumination that we'd temporarily hooked up behind the blue legend. In person as it were, however, we were very pleased with the result.

Okay then, back to our local customer's simulator ... 

Below, you can see the two display units that had previously been purchased from another supplier and which were to be incorporated into the new build. We designed the main instrument panel around these and then the real work began: re-working the interfacing of the MFD and the PFD - although that's another post entirely if we ever find the hours needed to detail it. You can probably tell from the subsequent photos how involved the process was ... !

 

Oh, and skipping to the once again operational MFD and PFD ...

A customised 737 Panel ...

We don't offer a lot of 737 products as there are already plenty of quality manufacturers in this market and there's not really much else that we could normally offer over and above what's already available. Recently, however, we've been working with a customer who has specific space limitations and therefore custom measurements are required to properly house the panels in their rightful places.

After much testing and verification in our workshop to prove the possibilities, the panel will be used by our customer with his PMDG 737-800 NGX software via one of our 64 Input Boards for the switches, and a Conditional 64 Output Board to drive the LEDs in the annunciators.

And so this is the Boeing 737 N1 SET / SPD REF / AUTO BRAKE Panel that we dispatched to him a couple of weeks back, complete with our newly developed backlighting process. We haven't implemented this backlighting technique across our entire product range at the moment, as due to time restraints - and getting work out to customers - its become more of a panel by panel expansion (I guess that would be the best way to describe it!) ...

Alongside the panel itself, we also made the functioning combination switches  which include a rotary switch, and an encoder (with pushbutton also if required). As you can tell from the positioning of the text, we've actually used some 30 degree rotaries as the 45 degree switches we had access to weren't able to be readily altered for the purposes required.

As a one-off type of project, a small section of vero board has been used to mount the small MFD switches, which isn't perhaps very pretty but gets the job done all the same! The photo below shows the panel about 80% wired.

A notable couple of omissions on this panel are obviously the two annunciators that accompany it, because we had already built these previously for our customer, so we simply built the rest of the panel around these measurements and the overall dimension constraints for the panel that were originally provided to us. The dual concentric knobs are designed and manufactured by us as well.

We've also improved our engraving technique lately as well, which is hopefully demonstrated by the picture above. It takes a little longer to accomplish, but the results are certainly worth it ...

Bell 206 MIP: Fully-wired, low-profile

As mentioned in the previous post regarding our needing to limit the amount of hardware extending out of the rear of the Main Instrument Panel's body (and thus preventing it from being held flush against the LCD monitors where the gauges are positioned), below are a couple of photographs to show the profile of a completed, fully-wired Bell 206 MIP that's ready to be sent to a customer. Please note that normally the sealing of the MIP is done with black material and not red as shown here (which might now be considered an easily identifiable mark of the first completed unit we ever supplied!) ...

This effect (the flattening of all wires and hardware) has been achieved by machining the appropriate recesses into the rear of the MIP itself and then running all of the cables and wires through these. Similarly, all five encoders, the Fuel Valve switch, the GPS/NAV switch, and the two pushbuttons have been recessed and/or modified so as to 'disappear' beneath the panel's rear surface.

The cables that we use are a combination of CAT5E and 6-Core, all of which extend out of the bottom of the panel where the pedestal would normally extend from. This keeps them all hidden away and tidily restrained. The 6mm bracket which covers these four cables together and holds them in the correct exit position is actually positioned well below the depth of where a normal LCD monitor would fit.

Our fully-wired and tested Bell 206 MIPs are naturally more expensive than our standard version (again, more details on our website soon), although for customers who wish to use the Ruscool range of Bell 206 hardware and software it might take a few extra hassles out of realising your own completed helicopter sim.

64 Input Board - Update

We're also in the final stages of testing an update to the 64 Input Board in which the user can now specify whether individual inputs should be switches or momentary pushbuttons. This remedies a reported issue where switches were occasionally being misread and stored as momentary pushbuttons. 

Previous to this latest update, our software would automatically determine the input action as either momentary or static. This, however, meant that sometimes a switch could be rendered inactive if the system happened to misinterpret the function as a momentary action. The physical manifestation of this would be the affected switch appearing to become 'stuck' and non-operational until the software had been restarted. 

In order to resolve this, the user can now individually define the required action of each input in the configuration program itself (as indicated by the red section of the screenshot below) ...

You might also notice that the Bytes column is no longer used in order to streamline the user interface. 

This update will be made available in the Software section on our website shortly.

Note: We try to provide various ways and means of keeping our customers informed about such updates via Twitter (also tracking on our homepage), MailChimp, our Support Forum and, of course, this blog.