I was born in 1965 in a small village called “Helden” in the south of the Netherlands. After primary and secondary school, I visited high school for an education in electronics.
After school, I started to work for “Philips Medical Systems” for a short period. But soon I found a job at a company called “Unisign“. Here I still work as a hardware and software engineer for more then 35 years already. Unisign is developing and building CNC controlled drilling and milling machinery, as also special handling units for synthesis machinery.
I always had interest in aviation, but when a colleague at Unisign showed me FS5 one day, this interest changed into a fascination. In the beginning I had no idea how and where to fly to. Since I was a programmer, I started to write a program that planned flights for me. This program has been on the internet for free as “Flight Planner 4”, and later on as “Adventure 2000” sold by Apollo Software.
I got bored with just sitting behind the PC, and after a few years of research I actually started serious building a Boeing 777 cockpit in 2002. The first design did not look very well, but I learned a lot about working with wood which was not my thing at all. Also I learned a lot about signal interfacing from and to flight simulator. I learned what I could and could not build myself up to get a satisfying result.
So in 2005 I stripped down the first cockpit and started from scratch in 2006. This second version looked a lot better, using LCD displays instead of CRT displayed and panels from Flight deck Solutions instead of home build panels. All panels have backlight now and buttons and knobs are very realistic. From 2010 to 2013 the project has been “paused” due to circumstances. In 2014 I moved to the city of “Venlo” with much more space, especially concerning visuals. While moving the cockpit and rebuilding it again in 2015 I also did a huge update, such as repainting, replacing the 6 older PC’s with 2 new ones and preparing the shell construction for a large screen.
Feel free to check this website out to see what I have made and how I made it. Not in many words, but with a lot of pictures. Not to tell you how to build a cockpit, but to give you an idea how you could build a cockpit or parts of it. Since I learned a lot from other builders, I hope this information will help others to build, but also how not to build in case you do not like it