I’ve had things shipped from FDS via Canada Post / USPS before and delivered in under a week. The CDU bay that FDS sent me on the 20th, hasn’t arrived yet, 11 days later. According to the USPS it entered customs on the 25th, that was 6 days ago. I can’t imagine that something would sit in customs for this long. I’ll have to call my friend who used to work in air freight.

http://www.fs2crew.com/cart/products/FS2Crew-2010%3A-FSX-737-Default-Edition-Voice-Commander-Series.html

• Full voice control integration:  Issue voice commands to control your crew using your microphone!
• Powerful new audio engine (volume control, 3-D Sound, audio device control, USB headset support).
• Unique state-of-the-art voice control system to ensure maximum voice recognition accuracy.
• Crew interation modelled: First Officer/Pilot Monitoring, FA, Engineer, Start Crew and Gate Agent.
• Conditioned based voice command system to ensure minimum uncommanded actions.
• Complete internal redesign to ensure maximum user friendliness and ease of use.
• No computer generated synthetic voices used!
• Real human recorded United States, German,  British, French, Irish, Dutch, Australian, Spanish andFinnish voice sets included for the First Officer.
• Checklists, flows and crew interaction based on real-world 737 Airline SOPs.
• Totally re-designed Configuration Manager.
• FA Cabin announcements with independent adjustable volume control.
• Built-in pushback crew with Jetway integration.
• Integration options with AES and FSPassengers.
• New sound effects for the default 737 aircraft.
• First Officer takeoffs.
• Cockpit Voice Recorder transcripts
• Blackbox (for Audio Engine Error Checking)
• And a whole lot more!!!

They also recommend these enhancements:

http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=258836&pid=1626410&st=0&#entry1626410

If anyone uses the Technical Service Richter software, they’ve moved. More info from the developer below, but in short their old provider dumped their site and email address. He’s working on a new site but for now, you can get more info below.

http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/showthread.php?p=87184#post87184

http://www.technicalservicerichter.com/

Ok the old captain’s seat I made looked really cool. But, I could not sit in it more then 5 minutes. It just was not comfortable to remain in for any period of time, even with a lot of cushioning.

So today, I picked up an office chair at Office Depot. It looks really good material wise, as it matches the grey color. I removed the under carriage of the mechanical section and placed it flat onto the bottom base of the old captains chair, and it worked GREAT! Looks “Decent”… and of course, is very comfortable! The good thing is, I’ll get another one of these, and all I have to do is build the bottom base for the FO side. Done. Neat!

Now, what I will do is cut out a hole in the top, of the bottom section I built. This will allow the mechanical section to screw into the bottom of the chair. The piston will be “inside” the bottom section, hidden. It will fit into what is normally the legs that go outwards. (That you fit the caster wheels into) I’ll cut the legs off so that the piece will fit into the bottom section, and then I can screw them to the wood. This will let the chair rotate left and right (just as your office chair does) allowing a person to get to the yolk. And, it allows for height adjustment as well which is very cool. Finally, because the piston will be inside the lower box, I will attach the buttkicker gamer to it and make it into a rumble seat for sim vibrations, etc. That’s going to work great!

And of course, Pilot Coral wanted to try out the seat with the temporary Saitek yoke. (Which will be replaced with a real replica yoke eventually) Daddy will have to get the First Officers seat done soon, as Coral’s feet don’t quite reach the rudder pedals yet!

Update 3: I followed those steps and the iVibe showed active in the control panel. I left the control panel open and fired up FSX. The iVibe Box had all it’s lights lit up and I was very excited! I started the default 737… and once FSX started, all the lights on the iVibe box went out. I looked at the control pane’s config settings, “Communication Failure”

I give up on the iVibe. Back to my Buttkicker Gamer that has worked EVERY time……

Update 2: Holy smokes… finally got it working.

1. iVibe under Vista must be UNPLUGGED from POWER AND USB.
2. Boot your computer up.
3. Login to Vista…
4. Plug in Power to iVibe box.
5. Start control panel. It’ll say no device found.
6. Plug device into computer via USB. Press Ok/Retry.
7. Device now will work.

Wow….

Update: So I have spent 3 hours trying to get the iVibe to work. I can’t create an account on their forums, because the image verification of their forums doesn’t work. And, I can’t search the forums either for the same reason. (You are required to type in the image verification, for searches…)

Original Post

I bought an iVibe about 5 years ago, used it a couple times and then that’s about when I stopped simming due to real life stuff. Its been sitting around for a few years. When I started the 737 sim, the first thing I did was pull out the iVibe but, as was a common case, Craig (the developer) was on hiatus again and was no were to be found.

That was around January of this year. Low and behold, after just checking, seems in April Craig appeared out of no where and created  a beta Vista 64 bit driver for the iVibe!

The beta driver is here. Make sure you read ALL the posts on this thread BEFORE installing!

Moved the MIP over to where I’m going to build the shell, etc. Right now have a 24″ LCD mounted to the wall until I get a projector based visual system going. Once the CDU bay arrives I’ll put that in place instead of a kitchen chair heh, and I’ve placed the glare order with FDS so that should get going sometime this week and will finally have a place to put the EFIS and MCP! Then, the real yolks and throttle, pedastal, overhead… So much more to do!

Just placed the glare order, should be talking to Peter about that this week. I’m hoping the CDU bay/stand will ship this week!

Being the aviation nut I am, I really wanted to have a couple ringtones related to airlines on my iPhone. There are a lot of sites out there that will sell you stuff, but a simple search on the web usually returns some good links. Well, I couldn’t find any, so I made a couple myself and I’m sharing the sound files with you.

First, my default ring tone is the two tone chime “Ding, Dong”. You can download that here.

And, I have a special ringtone for my wife. Part of the GPWS, this is the “bwoop bwoop” alert which can be downloaded here.

Feel free to use these for whatever purpose you wish, be it ringtones, sounds for your computer, whatever you like!

Hey this is awsome! I just learned LiveATC.net (Awsome site that broadcasts ATC) now has an iPhone App for $2.99! While you may think this is pricey compared to most .99 cent apps, please remember that these guys run servers and use bandwidth to get this great content to you. So, when it boils down to it, if you really like listening to ATC, $2.99 ain’t bad!

Click here to see the app on iTunes!

Today, while getting ready for a yard sale, I had some time to put on a coat a primer, sand the grain, and then reprimer it again. I’ll probably add one more coat of primer tomorrow. From there, I’ll decide if I want to paint it a particular 737 color, or leave it just as the primer color. And then, a trip to the fabric store for some foam and material!

Please click to continue:

http://www.fscharts.com

I started building a captains seat! Its just about done, just need to make the arms, primer, sand and paint! (Then make the cushions) but so far it’s coming out great! These are a 727 style but I like them, and it’s pretty cheap to build these. (about $80 to $100 USD)