[simpits-tech] Simulator "manuals"?

[Roy Coates]

On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, Matt Bailey wrote:

> This is just something I've thought about for that much-anticipated day when
> I finally have the room and money for a pit, wondered if anyone does this. I
> thought it would be a good idea to document everything about the pit, right
> down to the wiring. Most of this would be done while the pit's being built.
> Perhaps an extension of concept drawings. It would be similar to having
> service manuals and schematics for real aircraft. Aside from being "cool" to
> have "service manuals" for your pit :) it would make repair and modifications
> a lot easier. A side benefit is it would be simple to upload parts of the
> documentation for others to view, so they can see exactly how your pit is
> made and get some ideas.
>
> The only real problem I see with this is I am afraid since there are so many
> new ideas and changes all the time, the project would get way ahead of the
> docs and you'd end up with broken docs.


I made 3 very VERY rough sketches of how I wanted my pit to look. I made
no scale drawings, no plans - nothing. I didn't have the time to plan it
all so I just figured it out as I went along knowing that it had to be X"
wide for the seat, Y" tall for the monitor and so on.

I did keep careful notes on the wiring though, and I kept that simple by
making notes on each individual panel and carefully labelling each
connector especially since this toy was going to have to be modular for
transport.

I have since prepared a manual of sorts so that I am not always called
upon when something needs revising - or god forbid - something breaks!

I found that so many initial ideas were cast aside as I worked that any
initial manual would have been useless at the end.

I did keep a 'fairly' good photographic record, which is on the web site
and in the paper manual.

Roy.