The forthcoming presentation of my home built Spitfire simpit at an aero-collector fair in Paris was an incitation for me to create additional controls and some dummy components to improve its visual aspect.
The new control fitted is the wobble pump for which I had designed a replica some time ago but needed to make up its support bracket, as the pump bracket is popped onto the aircraft skin just above the chassis unit. This was done in stiff card with some reinforcing added behind the scenes. The micro switch is connected to the control column Arduino Leonardo USB game controller located on the floor under the rudder pedal unit. In DCS the wobble pump lever at rest is shown in the outer position, but I found that this tends to get in the way if you need to look down to the right of the pilot seat to find the drop tank cock or its jettison handle, so I arranged for the rest position to be inward.
I then decided to add some “eye-candy” parts to the rear cockpit section which includes the pilot seat with frames 10 & 11. On the right side I added a windscreen de-icing control lever and the CO2 gas bottle and lever for the emergency landing gear system. On the front of frame 11 I added the pilots headrest armour plate and the voltage regulator on the rear.
By the way, I read recently that the pilots padded headrest was progressively removed or no longer fitted to Spitfire IX’s when it was found that fighter ace Paddy Finucane died because his parachute harness got stuck in this when he tried to bail out.
Work was done to replace the pilot’s seat backrest with a more accurate curve profile and to visually tidy up the seat support mechanism plus the armour plating. I also got round to adding the pilot access door catch mechanism and the clips for the crowbar.
The rear section is now much more presentable even if all this work has very little to do in improving realism when flying the sim, especially when using VR ! But hey ho I started life making small plastic kits and I am now working full scale.
Finally I installed the new thicker profile spade grip which now includes a working firing button warning pin which pops out of the housing when the safety catch is on.