It has taken many hours of trail and error, but It looks like I'm getting close to having my engraving dialed in. Extruded Acrylic is very difficult to engrave with a CNC Router, but it's much less expensive than Cast Acrylic, so I'm doing what I can with what I got. Look at the third line on each pic, almost 12 hours of playing with feed rates, depth of cut per pass, chip extraction methods, and spindle RPMs.

I've spent the better part of 12 hours trying to get my radio panel engraving and milling to produce a panel worth to display to you, but it is not working out in my favor. I intend on using my CNC Router for my personal panels but also providing a more minimalist and budget friendly method of producing face plates for sim panels later on. Not everyone can build or buy a cnc machine for this project, and I don't want to leave anyone behind. With that said, here's the less t

Although I prefer using the MAX7219 boards to drive displays, I've had requests to show how to use shift registers to run single-digit displays in a daisy chain. It's a pretty busy layout but the circuit diagram below links to the full size image you can zoom in and trace each cable. I have not tested this personally due to lack of time, I just read up a bit and went for it. I intend on releasing a video tutorial based on this post in the future. Hopefully this helps, if

Here's Part 4, desoldering the seven segment displays from the MAX7219 then testing in SimVim. Please read the description for a list of parts and tools to DIY. The desoldering Iron I picked up from Amazon pretty cheap made my life much easier.

I've had some technical issues to contend with this past week but I finally got back on track. I was using ShotCut to create my videos and after spending hours upon hours recreating Part 3 of the VHF series it refused to export the project to video. I've switched over to another paid editing software and it's much easier to use and I just completed the VHF Part 3 video for the 4th time... New Video should be up tonight.

This is all I had time to complete this evening. I keep things very simple and MS Paint is my go to for most things. I'll add more drawings as I get them knocked out. These are larger than the standard size face plates most simulator suppliers make so if you already have a pedestal my face plates may not fit. Typical overall dimensions of the COM and NAV panels are ~145mm x 65mm. Since I need to fit 8 digit displays side by side I need 152mm x 70mm. Additionally, I will

In Part 2 of the Simple VHF Radio series I'll walk you through multiplexing Two Max7219 seven segment display modules as outputs for the Captain's VHF radio. Using all of our electrical components, a breadboard, arduino, and SimVIm we build and configure a working prototype to ensure the logical configuration and all the hardware is in working order before starting the build of our communications panel. This turned out longer than expected, but I covered the important need-

After pricing out all of the knobs, switch covers and other bits I need for the Sim, it turns out I'd be spending somewhere around $1,200.00 USD for everything. So it was not a tough decision to pickup a modestly priced 3D printer off ebay for $180.00 USD. I'm still dialing it in but the prints so far are not bad for my first attempts, though I expect them to get much better as I true up and tune the bed, extruder, and dial in the slicer software (Ultimaker Cura 3.6.0). *Ex

After two days of battling stubborn SSDs (Seven Segment Displays), they're working! A big thank you to John Boccabella over at the SimVim Patreon Site for the help. There are 3 different 5-Volt pins on the arduino and with my luck I chose the wrong one. There's a small issue to resolve where the segments are a little too dim, but I'm waiting on the helpful members at SimVim's Patreon site to help with that on too. I will be using dedicated 5V power supply with +/- bus to

Here's an overview of the Simple VHF Radio panel. I explain the project, walk you through configuring your Arduino to talk with the hardware via SimVim, and build a breadboard prototype with a Push-Button 360 degree rotary encoder and tactile button. My goal is to keep the videos at 15 min or less but I did go over by 2 minutes as there was a lot of information to cover. I'll add more photos and info when I'm at my editing/recording computer later on. For now, here's the

Hey guys, I haven't posted a new video yet because I've been working on different concepts for the VHF COM Radio. The actual Radio in the ZIBO mod looks complete but only a few buttons are functional. After thinking about it, the only functions I ever use are the Tuning Knob and the TFR button to switch Standby and Active Frequencies. For the first Panel we're just going to make something that looks good and functions well for offline or online flights. Later, I'll releas

SimVim is a very easy to use plugin that interfaces your hardware with X-Plane 11. In our case, the Zibo Mod. In this video we'll look at downloading and installing SimVim then follow their written tutorial to connect a toggle switch and get our first working switch!

Paul's Flight Deck Channel is live on YouTube. I actually had it up for a few days now but I'm just now getting content added. Click the URL to hop over and check it out. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRPDFqyl2KTR2Mgj2ygmUng

After carefully considering whether or not I'd take the plunge and create a site to document the entire build process of my 737 sim, I decided to go ahead and just do it. I'm hoping to get enough useful content added to launch the first week of 2019. To late to turn back so I guess I'm in it for the long haul.