Hello,

my name is Dave  and i live in the UK. I am a toolmaker by trade, and have been since i left school some 20 odd years ago.  My interests are aviation, photography (always a good combination) music; I played drums in a rock band for around 10 years and radio control scale aircraft. I met up with Craig "Bricklayer" Rochester on a forum and was fascinated by his ideas and designs. Craig is a great guy to work with and certainly thinks "outside the box”. I hope you find the project interesting, and please feel free to add any comments, good or bad in the guest book.

Thanks for visiting

Dave

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Craig here,

I live in Boston, US with my wife and 8 year old son.  I’m a mechanical engineer.  I do pharmaceutical process stuff, clean rooms and production mechanical equipment.  The “Bricklayer” handle is from the 12 years I spent as a mason before going back to finish college. 

I never had a hobby before I tried Falcon4.  I was trying to land the damn thing and had a “suspension of disbelief” experience; for a few seconds I had the sensation I was really flying.  I soon got dissatisfied at the limitations of seeing the virtual world from a monitor screen and not feeling the sensations of flight.  I started to research flight simulators and scheming on how to do what the big boy do, but on the cheap.  I’m a wannabe designer so playing with simulator hardware is a chance for me to try my hand at designing stuff. i first chose the Spitfire as a simulator cockpit because of its relative simplicity for the pilot controls.  I also wanted to do a non fly-by-wire plane where the forces from the control surfaces could be simulated by force feedback on the stick and pedals.  Since I’ve started studying the Spit, I’ve really developed a real love of this machine. I hope to figure out how to simulate as much of the tactile experience as i can. That with Dave’s high fidelity cockpit, should be fun to fly.