[simpits-tech] Display news...

[Gene Buckle]

A couple of weeks ago I chased down a lead and found a Mylar vendor that 
can supply material up to 124" wide. It's _cheap_. For example, a 100 foot 
roll of .5mil @ 96" wide is roughly $200 shipped.

We've also come up with a way around the patent issue - instead of the 
curved "ears" at the ends of the mirror, it can be more square - something 
shown as "prior-art" in the patent, but a feature we couldn't use because 
we couldn't get Mylar wide enough.

What this means is that we're now open to making plans & short kits 
available to people.

We're looking at two "reference" designs.

The first would be large enough to accommodate standard GA aircraft right 
around Cessna 152-172 size up to something around a Lear or Cessna 
Citation.

The second would be a "big iron" display that could be used with cockpits 
around the size of the Boeing 737.

If there is enough interest, we'll go ahead and get the design work done 
and I'll build Inventor models so you can see what they'll look like.

However, we're not going to build prototypes for either one of them until 
there is enough commercial interest. This doesn't mean a bunch of folks 
going, "Hey! I'd buy that!", it's some number of people (say 5 for this 
example) willing and able (and actually do!) put down a down payment for a 
short kit.
We're doing this because building one of these things takes a ton of time 
and effort when you're writing the manual for it at the same time. The 
materials aren't cheap either - the prototypes and kit parts will be in 
18mm and 12mm Russian Birch - it's a high quality material. It's not the 
kind of endeavor that either one of us can fund ourselves on the hope that 
someone might buy one someday.

A "short kit" is typically parts that most folks can't make themselves - 
all the shaped parts, etc. Any dimensional lumber, fasteners, Mylar, 
projectors, etc. would be supplied by the builder.

We'll also look into providing the vacuum management system - this would 
likely consist of an Arduino Uno style "shield" and the parts to build a 
servo controlled bypass gate similar to what you've seen in our videos. 
Servo not included.

There will definitely be size issues you're going to need to be aware of 
if you're going to build one of these. Our single-seat version is a tight 
fit in a room with a 9' ceiling. You can just about be guaranteed that the 
GA display is going to be bigger than that and I shudder to think how much 
shop space that 7x7 display is going to eat up.

Because of the size & scope of this thing, don't expect any concrete 
results out of us until April-ish.

I'm going to re-post this to various places in order to make sure the 
folks that are interested see it.

Thanks all!

g.

-- 
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