EEVblog #1268 - DIY Boeing 747 Cockpit Simulator Full Tour

[EEVblog]

Full tour around, under, and inside the world's most expensive DIY Boeing 747-400 full motion flight simulator under construction. With Rod Redwin from Simulator Solutions:
https://simulatorsolutions.com.au/

[johnlsenchak]

I was waiting  for  Outback  Dave to climb    out of  the escape hatch  after  getting a  little  to excited over those  rotary  encoded  knobs   and  display.  As he would call  it they where "sex  on a stick"   Interesting video,  a real nice look at   inside and  outside   a  airplane  cockpit   that  most people    real  don't  see that often

[Ranayna]

I am a bit surpised that you were able to keep the urge to "twiddle the knobs" in check :p

Also i am astonished, even regarding the age of the design, how "inefficient" it is. All that stuff with various supply voltages and frequencies seems unneccessarily complicated.

[German_EE]

One thing that I have always puzzled about, why is aircraft wiring always white rather than using colored looms for different functions?

[Yansi]

Because teflon and spec 44, 55 (and similar) wiring is usually white or light gray. Also, letter/number codes can be printed directly onto the wires themselves.

[nctnico]

One thing that I have always puzzled about, why is aircraft wiring always white rather than using colored looms for different functions?

That is common in industrial control systems in general. You'll often see the installer used a single color throughout the entire cabinet. If you want to know what goes where you have to get the diagram.

[Yansi]

One thing that I have always puzzled about, why is aircraft wiring always white rather than using colored looms for different functions?

That is common in industrial control systems in general. You'll often see the installer used a single color throughout the entire cabinet. If you want to know what goes where you have to get the diagram.

Well, no.  It's not a "pick a color" by any means. 

Industrial control cabinets, are bound by specific standards of color coding.
Dark blue wires are used for DC low voltage controls,  red wires for AC isolated controls, etc.  Orange wires denote presence of externally brought in voltage (from external cabinets, etc).

I am not sure, if these standards vary across different countries, but I am pretty sure, that they are pretty common for numerous countries in the central and eastern EU countries.

[Yansi]

Also before the EU brought in numerous common standards for  EU countries, or made those "harmonized" standards, I am sure many countries have had very different wire color coding standards.  Thankfully that got fixed by EU, at least, partially.  Some countries adopted these multi-national standards even before being members of the EU.

It is quite common to see a control or a power distribution panel with a warning, that wire color coding is non-standard, using this or that old standard. Even to see some upgraded ooold cabinets, where the wire color coding is mixed.

But still - I make the point - it is not a "pick a color you want". No. Not for industrial or power distribution stuff.  (HVAC and white home tech are a completely different beast, but those rarely do qualify as an industrial control cabinets. These vendors are used to using a completely different color codes, mainly, to ease servicing (HVAC) ).

[SeanB]

Aircraft wire, pretty much all PTFE, either solid or foam, and the connectors are coded by various means, orientation of the inner in relation to the body, or with various arrangements of the guide slots and grooves in the outside, and of course also with some in the same shell size and orientation, but with different pin diameters for some of the pins. Those ITT Cannon connectors all come from the manufacturer with a kit, which has the connector shell, and with it a small transparent bottle with a red lid, containing the exact number of pins for that connector, plus the same number of blanking plastic plugs, used when you are not using the full complement of pins electrically, to fill the holes in the shell, along with a small plastic tool, red on half and white on the other half, which is a single use insert extract tool used to place them in the shell after you have crimped or soldered the wires into the rear of the pins.

The 115 VAC 3 phase AC system is dropped down in many places to a 28VAC 3 phase 400Hz voltage, used to power many of the resolvers and synchros that are smaller, along with having in many avionics boxes a separate 6VAC 400Hz transformer, driving the input devices, whether they are resolvers, synchros or even pots, which are all AC excited. This 6VAC is also used as a phase reference for the systems, as the most common way to convert your input into an analogue voltage, before it is digitised, is to use the 400Hz reference to drive a series of analogue switches, that sample the inputs at the peak of the waveform, along with the reference voltage, to give a ratiometric conversion that will be accurate irrespective of the actual bus voltage.

Yes those plugs are oriented differently, and getting any variety other than your standard orientation was always a massive pain, as the variants are not always available, or are often just a cross reference to the base number, so no matter what orientation you order you get the base part. If you just needed the pins no problem, just toss the rest, but if you actually needed that shell it was a bit of a pain.

[michelinux]

Boeing 747 Cockpit View - Take-Off 




Airbus A340 - Oopps! Houston, we have a problem... 

[Syntax Error]

We so need to see there are guys insane enough to be thinking this big! Reasurring to note the old 747 is fly-by-cables. More of this 

Maybe mister Redwin will get a 737 Max 8 cockpit, as a whole load of these crash-by-wire airframes could be heading for the bone yard in 2020?