L-1011 Trainer Installation: NAV and COM Radio Head Integration

L-1011 Trainer NAV and COM Radio Integration

Today we finished the VHF NAV and VHF COM Radio head integration with X-Plane. Ben Klang wrote the code for the VHF NAV radios. The VHF NAV radios use a 2 of 5 encoding method and we are reading them with National Instruments DIO cards. Ben wrote a program on a small Linux box that continuously reads the values and sends them on to X-Plane via a UDP DataRef.

We also completed the VHF COM Radio integration. Here, the radios use the ARINC 429 Labels 030 with different SDI numbers to differentiate the various COM channels. For now, we integrated COM1 and COM2 to directly interface with X-Plane. Just as with the VHF NAV tuning information, the VHF COM frequencies are passed to X-Plane via the network as UDP packets.

The video below shows the operation of the VHF COM and VHF NAV radios in our L-1011 cockpit.

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Flight Director Integration Tests

L-1011 Flight Director Integration Tests

The ADIs in the L-1011 simulator incorporate Flight Director (FD) bars for Pitch, Roll and Yaw. Today I worked on moving Flight Director information from X-Plane to the ADIs. To do so, I am using ARNIC 429 Label 170, 171 and 172. The Flight Director bus is a slow speed bus and FD information is passed to the ADI at 12.5Kbps. For the first few tests tonight I focused on the roll and pitch data. X-Plane actually does not have Flight Director data for guided yaw, however, that information can be derived from a number of other X-Plane data points.

The video below is a short demo of a Flight Director guided roll to the left to heading 225 and then we see a flight director guided roll-out at the target heading. Watch the HSI and the ADI in particular:

p.s. Ignore the erratic Localizer indicator on the ADI, it's only getting test data.

Avionics Bending: End-To-End Test of the ADI, HSI, VSI and ALT with X-Plane

L-1011 Trainer Installation - X-Plane to ARINC End-To-End Test

Today Jim and myself reached another important millstone with the L-1011 project. We performed a complete end-to-end test of the ARINC 429 compatible primary flight instruments. This now finally tests all of the components in the loop for both the Captain's as well as the F/O station. The instruments tested today are:

• Altimeter (ALT)
• Vertical Speed Indicator (VSI)
• Attitude Director Indicator (ADI)
• Horizontal Situation Indicator

All in all we are transmitting 46 ARINC 429 labels over 8 discrete transmit buses. 4 of the buses are 100Kbps buses and 4 are 12.5Kbps buses. Of the four 12.5Kbps buses two are standard ARINC 429 buses and two are ARINC 575 compatible buses (so no SSM information on the label word). The video below is a short demonstration of flying the L-1011 sim in a very basic mode with no trim and only basic functions enabled, again, the test if for the ARINC instruments and not for the A/D conversion of the control inputs. 

In addition to the ARINC and X-Plane end-to-end tests we also installed the left hand side audio side panel. 

L-1011 Left Hand Side - Audio Side Panel

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Captain's and F/O ARINC 429 Instrument Tests

We are slowly ramping up the number of ARINC 429 labels sent as test data to the simulator instruments. The test data set has now enlarged from 26 to 48 labels sent over a total of 6 different buses; 3 buses on the Captain's side and 3 buses on the F/O side. Both sides will receive different data sets just as they would on the actual aircraft, this way we will be able to simulate complete subsystem failures. The video above show generic test data being sent to the Capt ARINC 429 instruments as well as to the F/Os instruments. 

L-1011 Trainer Installation: ARCIN 429 for Altimeter and Audio Side Panel

L-1011 Altimeter ARINC 429 Integration Tests

Today Jim Blasco and myself worked on doing ARINC 429 label integration tests with the Altimeter. The Altimeter uses Label 204 and due to the fact that it uses a slightly different variant of a ARINC 429 compatible protocol it has to run on it's own bus. The 204 Label for the Altimeter uses a 32bit word that does not have a SSM field or Parity Bit.

The short demo video bellows shows data being sent to the ADI, HSI, VSI and ALT.  The next steps will be to send actual simulator from X-Plane to the instruments. 

Besides the tests with the Altimeter we also installed the first of two audio side panels. The L-1011 Cockpit Procedure Trainer did not come with these side panels and we got them from an actual (British Airways) L-1011. The audio side panels provide the hookups for the headset (boom and headset) as well as a connector for the hand microphone. The side panel also has room to store the headset in.

L-1011 Audio Side-Panel Installation

L-1011 Trainer Installation: ARINC 429 Cabling Complete

We have reached another millstone with the L-1011 project. All of the cabling is complete for the ARINC 429 compatible devices. To test the correct installation of the cables and to make sure that there are no problems with the type of cable that we are using in the simulator we ran some tests by sending test data to the left hand side (captain's) ADI and HSI. Here is a short video showing ARINC 429 high speed and low speed data being transmitted to both instruments cabled to the same high speed and low speed bus.

Cable Type Used: AWG 24 2 Conductor Shielded

Over the next two weeks we will start sending all ARINC 429 labels needed for the simulator over a total of 16 TX and 16 RX lines. The instruments used in the L-1011 simulator that are ARINC 429 compatible are:

1. Attitude Direction Indicator (ADI)
2. Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI)
3. Altimeter (ALT)
4. Vertical Speed Indicator (VSI)
5. Traffic and Collision Alert System (TCAS)
6. VHF Communication Radio Controller
7. ATC Transponder Controller

Ultimately we would like to replace the current RDMIs with ARINC 429 compatible ones. 

Avionics Bending: Audio Panel Integration for the L-1011 Trainer

Tim Joransen and myself discussed how to do realistic audio panel integration for the simulator. So, to use a Virtual Air Traffic Control System (in our case VatSIM) we are currently thinking about using XSquawkbox.

To make the cockpit experience as realistic as possible from an audio perspective we need to have a number of discrete audio channels that can be fed into and received from the 4 audio panels in the cockpit. What and where are the four audio panels?

1. Captain's Audio Selector Panel on the aft center console
2. First Officer's Audio Selector Panel on the aft center console
3. Second Officer's Audio Selector Panel on the lower Flight Engineer's Console
4. Observer Audio Selector Panel to the left of the observer's seat

L-1011 Audio Selector Panel Locations - From Delta Pilot's Reference

Most audio panels made by Gables Engineering have a very similar pin configuration. And allow for a number of external components to be connected. For the L-1011 project, here are the external elements that connect to each audio selector panel:

• Headset (All Stations)
• Boom Microphone (part of the headset) (All Stations)
• Oxygen Mask Microphone  (All Stations)
• Hand Microphone (Captain, F/O and S/O only)
• Overhead Speaker (Captain and F/O only)
• Yoke R/T and INT Switch (Captain and F/O Only)

Here are the different audio channels that need to be fed to the Audio Select Panel to make the simulation as realistic as possible:

1. VHF COM 1 Audio (xsquawkbox)
2. VHF COM 2 Audio (xsquawkbox)
3. VHF COM 3 Audio (xsquawkbox)
4. HF COM 1 Audio (tbd)
5. HF COM 2 Audio (tbd)
6. VOR 1 Audio (xplane via plugin)
7. VOR 2 Audio (xplane via plugin)
8. ADF 1 Audio (xplane via plugin)
9. ADF 2 Audio (xplane via plugin)
10. Marker Beacon (xplane via plugin)
11. Ground Proximity Warning (xplane via plugin) 
12. Interphone (within the simulator)

The audio panel also routes the microphones for each of the audio stations to the respective channels. For the simulator here is the proposed mapping:

1. VHF COM 1 Microphone (to xsquawkbox)
2. VHF COM 2 Microphone (to xsquawkbox)
3. VHF COM 3 Microphone (to xsquawkbox)
4. HF COM 1 Audio (tbd)
5. HF COM 2 Audio (tbd)
6. Voice Recorder Output (tbd)
7. Interphone (within the simulator)

Of course there is still the Passenger Address (PA) system that would be, of course, part of the L-1011 however, for the purpose of building the simulator we will not worry too much about the PA system. We will not integrate the PA into the audio panel, however, the L-1011 has a Passenger Address panel on the overhead panel and we might consider connecting that. 

L-1011 Trainer Installation: 75% Panel Light-Up Milestone

L-1011 Panel Lighting

Today we celebrate reaching the 75% panel light-up milestone! Jim and myself also worked on installing more bus bars for the panel lighting. Currently we have a few more panels on the pilot's overhead panel to light up as well as a few panels on the Flight Engineers station. Most of the remaining 25% of panel lighting are the circuit breaker panels. Once this is complete, all the of the instrument lighting, panel lighting, flood lighting, instrument digital, instrument analog and flight control analog cabling is in place. Then we will get really deep into the phase where it's mostly software between the cabled components and the simulator platform.  

L-1011 Flight Engineer Station

Here are a few more pictures of the current state of the simulator panel lighting:

L-1011 Project - Panel Lighting

L-1011 Trainer Installation - Overhead Panel Lighting

L-1011 Project - Panel Lighting 

L-1011 Flight Engineer Console ... 2/3 Panel illumination complete. 

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Audio Panel and Dual ADF Head Power Up

This evening I ran the cabling for the first audio selector panel as well as the dual ADF panel. Both are located on the aft center console. The audio selector requires a lot of cables due to the fact that each of the audio channels has its own cable. The two remaining components that are not powered up yet on the aft console are the weather radar selector and the first officer's audio panel.

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Initial Light Plate Power-Up

L-1011 Light Plate Power-Up

I finally got my hands on a nice and compact 5VDC 120A power supply for the instrument panel light plates. Almost every panel in the Lockheed L-1011 cockpit has a backlit light plate that illuminates the legend on the plate. The power for the Light plates is 5VDC. Due to the fact that there are so many of them and that they use incandescent bulbs we needed a supply that can output a lot of Amps for the 5V required. Today we tested the power supply with 4 panels on the overhead panel: We powers up the Captains Windshield Wiper panel, the Exterior Lights panel on the eyebrow and the Interior Light panel also located on the eyebrow. Some of the light plates need some of the bulbs replaced, but, that's to be expected when dealing with 40 year old flight hardware.

The plan is to have all over the overhead and center console light plates powered up over the coming weekend.

L-1011 Trainer Installation: INU CDU and ATC Transponder Power-Up

L-1011 Litton INU CDU

Today Jim Blasco and myself installed a number of items into the simulator. We installed several computer components that will be used to drive the digital I/O as well as the ARINC 429 I/O. We also put power to all 3 of the Litton INU CDUs in the cockpit. There are two CDUs in the forward center console as well as a third on in the aft center console. You can see the #1 and #2 INU CDU in the image above. The picture below shows the cabling in progress.

L-1011 Litton INU CDU Cabling

We also powered up the ATC Transponder head as you can see in the image below. The ATC Transponder head that we have has facilities for TCAS. However, we will initially not build out the simulator for TCAS.

L-1011 ATC Transponder Power-Up

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Radio Head Cabling - ARINC 429 Prep

L-1011 Trainer - Radio ARINC 429 Cabling

The picture above is a good illustration of what most of the build sessions over the last few weeks have looked like. While there is lots of good progress, they are hard to really blog about. However, what you see in the image above is cabling work done on the Center Panel. The panel is home to the communication radios, the #3 INU CDU and the audio panels. There is also a controller for ATC as well the radar controller. The radios had been cabled to 24V DC and 440Hz 110V AC power a few weeks ago, however last night we installed the cabling for the ARINC 429 connections that will read data from the instruments and also send data to the displays. 

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Integral Instrument Lighting - F/O Side

The buildout of the instrument integral lighting continues on the First Officer side. We only have a few instruments left and we will have then 400Hz power as well as dimmer controlled lighting going to all of the instruments in the L-1011 simulator. We are doing the lighting build-out in parallel with the digital build-out of the simulator. 

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Digital Integration

L-1011 Trainer - Digital I/O - SO Station

Interfacing a completely analog cockpit with computers is a fascinating challenge. Generally there are a number of different types of input and output signals that need to be generated to interface with a 1970s era cockpit:

• Switch Input (which is digital in nature .. 0V for off and 24V for on)
• Annunciator and Switchlight  Output (again, these are very binary in nature ... on/off)
• Voltage Output 
• Current Output
• ARINC 429 Digital Avionics Data
• 3 Phase 400Hz Synchro Input (Analog Waveform)
• 3 Phase 400Hz Synchro Output (Analog Waveform)

These signals are progressively more complicated to generator with a computer from top to bottom. what I have been working on the last few weeks is the digital I/O interfacing of the first two categories ...  the switch input and annunciator output. 

To do so, Jim Blasco and myself are installing bus connected I/O modules into the S/O station, the overhead panel and the Main Instrument Panel. The images in the posting show the I/O modules partially installed and the cabling started. The image at the top of the posting is the set of I/O modules in the S/O station. The S/O station has by far the largest amount of switch elements. 

The two images below show the digital I/O station for the overhead and the MIP respectively. The MIP has the fewest amount of I/O switch position, however it has a good amount of annunciator lights and and elements that are requires by the Autopilot/Flight Director System.

L-1011 Trainer - Digital I/O - Overhead

L-1011 Trainer - Digital I/O - MIP

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Instrument Integral Lighting - Captain

L-1011 Instrument Lighting

The L-1011 cockpit has dozens and dozens of instruments that need to be connected to the integral lighting systems. I have been falling behind a little bit on working on the pilot side instrument lighting. Ignore the air conditioning hose in the image above in the top left corner ... it is temporary.

L-1011 Instrument Lighting

L-1011 Instrument Lighting

L-1011 Instrument Lighting - Captain's Side

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Seat Actuators

L-1011 Captain's Seat - Electric Seat Actuator Control

Here is a short demo of the servo motor driven seat actuators that we recently connected. The actuators drive the captain's as well as the F/O's seat in the vertical as well as the horizontal axis. The horizontal movement moves the seat forward and aft and also swings the seat outboard in the full aft position.

Below is a short video showing the L-1011 cockpit seat actuator action.

Below is an image that shows the power connection into the F/O seat. The cockpit seat assembly simply takes 115V/400Hz power for the motor actuators. Each seat is protected with a 2A fuse.

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Cockpit Shell Design

L-1011 Cockpit Shell Design

Jim Blasco and myself started working on the design work for the cockpit shell. I briefly talked bout this in the previous blog posting but now we have a much  more solid timeline in which we would like to approach this effort. The image above is a composite image showing , in red, the elements we

L-1011 Cockpit Shell Design

The image above shows the current, non-enclosed, state of the simulator at the museum. The image below super-imposes the cockpit enclosure as Jim and I are aiming to build. We have received all of the ceiling panels. We are still missing some of the side panels but maybe with the help from Kerry F. we might actually finally be able to get them!

L-1011 Cockpit Shell Superimposed Shell Structure

Getting this cockpit enclosure right,  short of someone donating us a last minute cockpit cut-off, will be what Jim and myself are focusing on over the next weeks. So stay tuned for a lot more progress updates on this topic.

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Seats and Cockpit Shell

L-1011 Seat Installation

I am finally able to slowly continue work on the L-1011 simulator. Unfortunately, I was not able to raise any contributions for the L-1011 project, and that's alright. The project will go on, just not at the pace I would have loved to move it forward. Today Jim Blasco and myself installed the captain's and first officer's seat into the procedure trainer. We are still short the original second officer's seat, but I hope that over time we will be able to find one.

The image at the beginning of the posting shows the first officer side and the 4" cutout required to place the spring loaded hight adjustment of the seat into the base plate of the procedure trainer. Unlike other aircraft cockpit seats, the L-1011 seats do not require rails. All horizontal movement of the captain's and the first officers's seats is done as an integral part of the seat assembly. The seats are also fully motorized and I will show the motor action in one of the upcoming postings.

L-1011 Cockpit - Capt. and F/O Seats installed.

Of course, as you can see in the image below, the cockpit is still completely open on all sides. To make the simulator feel more cockpit like, we will enclose the cockpit with the actual L-1011 cockpit ceiling and side panels as well as the actual L-1011 cockpit windows.

L-1011 Seats installed and moved to extreme outboard position.

I have also stared planning work for closing in the cockpit with the ceiling panels and windows that we have the L-1011 cockpit. Below is a picture of us trying on some of the ceiling panels and starting the work on building a super structure to hold them and the window panes. 

L-1011 F/O side ceiling panel. 

The aft ceiling panels contain the pilot's overhead speaker. You can see that in the image above and below in the forward part of the panel.

L-1011 F/O side ceiling panel. 

L-1011 Procedure: Pre-Flight Check - Flight Recorder, Waste Water, Oxygen, Doors

From Eastern Flight Training Manual

Flight Recorder

• Set day, month, flight number, weight, pilot number and leg; then insert the data on the flight recorder by pressing DDI insert button 

Rated EPR Mode Panel

• Set the current runway temperature with the thumbwheel and press TO-1 or TO-2
• Compare this data to the computed data to verify the integrity of the TAT/EPR computer, which may then be used for climb, cruise and go-around.

Humidity Control

• The humidity control is used, as necessary, to remove moisture from the air. Normally ON, except in cold or very dry climates. 

Oxygen Panel

• Confirm the green OXYGEN FLOW light is extinguished and the deployment switch is guarded and safetied. 

Annunciator Panel 

• Check for abnormal indication.

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Circuit Breaker Cabling

L-1011 Trainer Installation - Circuit Breakers

It's been a busy weekend for installing things into the simulator. However, there is not much to visually show because 90% of what I have been working on has to do with the hundreds of circuit breakers in the Lockheed L-1011 cockpit. As discussed a while ago, the L-1011 has 3 circuit panel groups.

• CB1 - is located right behind he pilot's overhead panel. 
• CB2 - is located above the flight engineer station 
• CB3 - is located to the right of the flight engineer station

Circuit Breaker Panel #1

From: TWA L-1011 Reference Manual

Circuit Breaker Panel #2

From: TWA L-1011 Reference Manual

Circuit Breaker Panel #3

From: TWA L-1011 Reference Manual

From: TWA L-1011 Reference Manual

Every instrument and every component in the L-1011 simulator runs through the correct circuit breaker on the respective panel. This we we are keeping with the desire of creating maximum realism and also with keeping the machine as safe to operate as possible.