IN RECENT weeks, users of the online gaming portal Steam could have purchased Microsoft Flight Simulator X for around $5.
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If you felt like taking it a few steps further, you could do what Robert Kidd has done and build your own fully functional flight simulator!
Hidden in the hills behind Verona is a garden shed with a difference.
Mr Kidd has spent “a long, long time” – and a dollar figure he prefers to keep to himself - building and wiring up his Boeing 777 cockpit, complete with captain and co-pilot chairs, instrument panels and heads-up displays.
Outside the front and side windows are three large screens where various software packages project realistic airport scenes, landscapes and weather conditions.
A software program called ActiveSky gives real-time, real-world weather conditions for wherever Mr Kidd chooses to fly.
That is, if it’s raining at dawn in Melbourne, Moscow or anywhere in between, it will be a wet morning at that airport in Mr Kidd’s cockpit.
There is also third-party software called FTX providing stunningly accurate landscape and terrains, and recordings of air traffic control announcements “to add a bit more realism”.
There are at least four computers hooked up to run various aspects of the cockpit and many (but not all) switches and dials perform valid flight functions via their links to the software.
“My son is a first officer with QantasLink based in Brisbane and he came down to help me with all the wiring,” Mr Kidd said.
“It all came in kit form from Toronto, bits at a time, but the problem was there was no manual with it!
“I guess they figure anyone ordering one knows about flight simulators already.”
Several years – and likely some tense build days with family and friends – later, Mr Kidd is just like his namesake.
“This is just so cool,” he said, sitting in the pilot’s chair looking out over Melbourne Airport on a sunny morning.
“I just can’t get over this, for a tin shed in Brogo – it amazes me every day.”
Mr Kidd admits he is still learning the actual flying of the simulated aircraft and, for the time being, has programmed it to ignore crashes (thankfully for this reporter as my landing left a lot to be desired).
“There’s so much to get your mind around,” he said.
However, he said he gives it a go every day.
“I’m in here seven days a week – whether I fly or not.
“I like coming out in the evening, when it’s dawn in Europe – the night flying scenery is amazing.”
Next on his wish list is a moving platform for the simulator, which he said would make his the only one in Australia with real motion outside commercial airline training simulators.
Mr Kidd said what started as a desktop PC flight sim hobby has turned into something much larger, and hopefully a viable business.
“I want people to come out here and enjoy this as much as I do,” he said.
U-Pilot Flight Simulator is available via bookings to Robert Kidd on (02) 6493 8321 and at the website (still under development) www.upilotflightsimulator.com.au.