Last updated 15 Dec 2001

INTRODUCTION

Over the past eighteen months thousands of hours have been spent on the Internet, gathering information to purchase or build a high fidelity 1:1 scale F-16C cockpit.

Buying a commercial cockpit was considered seriously, but the satisfaction of doing it yourself was just to great to pass up. 

Fig 1. Wombat in the F-16C MLU simulator .

So what's brought on this madness?. You may ask. Hmmm......... My answer would be Falcon 4.0  and sitting twenty minutes in a Danish F-16C MLU flight simulator  (Terma Elektronik AS) at the Australian Airshow.

Fig 2. This is how the end product should look like. 

So why build a F-16 pit?. You may ask..... Ah.. that's an easy question to answer. The Falcon  4.0 community and the huge amount reference material available for this type aircraft. Also the fact that most F-16A & B models are reaching  the end of their service life. Enabling old and surplus  parts to be purchased easily.

GETTING STARTED :

To obtain the best possible result when constructing a high fidelity F-16 cockpit it is important to work from  original  technical drawings or have access to the original cockpit. Unfortunately Australia is the only continent deprived of an  F-16 Squadron.

The only option available to me was to purchase a accurate fiberglass or plastic model (the bigger the scale the better). This also proved difficult as nothing was available that was suitable until I came across a small store doing a Xmas cleanout. By shear chance they had a F-16A cockpit and to my amazement it was a scale 1:12.

The General Dynamic F-16A cockpit by Force One (AMT ERTL) was purchased immediately for $145.00 AUD. The fact that this was a F-16A kit didn't concern me because it was going to be primarily used to construct the ejection seat and the cockpit tub.

This picture shows why my Sim mates call me Wombat.

The next challenge was to sit in a real cockpit and take some measurements. To my surprise this was easily achieved when the Australian Airshow was held in March 2001 (more about this topic later).

Finally the Internet and various publications will be used to complete the project. The design phase can now be started.