A long time ago I was working on a A340 cockpit for the Microsoft Flight Simulator.
I had already bought software, including Project Magenta Glass Cockpit (for about a 1000 Euros), Computers and screens.
All in all I had 3 PCs running the sim and I started looking into building the actual cockpit.
Then life happend… the company I worked for breached our contract and I had to drag AC-Consulting to court, and it took several months to at least get part of the money the company owed me.
All the stress caused a lung collapse, which in turn meant not flying to Canada to visit my very close friend Hélène Ward.
Which used to be my retreat from working as a subcontractor in document management software, which was quite a stressy job.
(Also lost the free flight with Air France for my 100.000 collected Air Miles.)
Had to sell my apartment.
Lotsa shit, none of it was fun.

Many years later and married to a wonderful wife, said wife bought me a new PC to get back into Flight Sims with MS Flightsimulator X and a nice Airbus Add On.
Well,… FSX loves to crash on longer flights and the frustration grew until I stopped using it.
Later on I tried X-Plane 9 as well as FSX Steam Edition, one crashed alot, the other was really clunky to use.
So for quite some time Flight Sims were not on my radar anymore, especially since I did not have a strong PC which I could dedicate to a Flight Sim.
Then a few months ago my brothers PC died.
And he decided 3 years are alot for a PC these days and he wants a new one.
I built him a new one, which was a blast since I had a really nice budget, he never skimps on hardware.
Then fixed his old one.
Since Angela did not want it I checked the Specs and saw that it runs X-Plane 11 without Problems.
Getting back into flying I started with the usual Default Cessna, in this case a 172 Skyhawk.
And with todays graphics and quite good flight model in XP11 I rediscovered VFR flying again and didn’t even try the Big Irons in the sim.

Additonally I stumbled over FS Economy which basically is a Website simulating a global virtual economy where thousands of people like me fly PAX and Cargo all over the globe, buy and sell planes, and some even operate bases on airports doing repairs and selling fuel.
They have Plugins for various Sims, including X-Plane 11.

Adding the SimCoders Reality Expansion Pack to the mix I found myself flying there ALOT.
By now I own a Cessna 172 Skyhawk, I bought it on a small airstrip in southern Brazil, and I am ferrying her from there to Vienna (LOWW).
Right now the plane is parked at Sanday (EGES) in the UK, waiting for the next flight towards Austria.

And since I enjoy it so much and have a supporting wife…
I’ll build a home cockpit in my workshop.
All the years, every time I went back into Flight Sims i thought about it.
But now it actually will become reality.
And here on the website I will document my build.

There are quite some pages About Home Cockpits out there.
So I guess one more collecting infos and ideas can’t hurt.