ANALOG GAUGES
The Flaps Gauge
My cockpit is designed to minimise the need to build lots of analog gauges, however there were some I could not avoid. The 27inch LCD that covers the Main Instrument Panel is not wide enough to reach the flaps gauge, nor the fuel and hydraulic gauges. There are also three gauges inside the left console, the oxygen regulator gauge, the oxygen quantity gauge and the cabin pressure gauge.
I decided to build real gauge for these, rather than stray from the design of the A-10 and move their position up to the main LCD.
I contemplated using small LCD screens to mount in them and export them with Helios, but decided that was untenable due to not having anymore display ports on my PC.
The first gauge I tackles was the easiest, the Flaps Gage. I designed it in CorelDRAW in a similar way to my other panels, the front panel being white, painted black then engraved in the laser.
LED backlight was done using some small cut offs of LED strip light, and i chose to use white LED's rather than green just to break it up a little bit.
The Landing Gear Panel in parts. The flaps guage is visibile, with and the plate that the servo mounts to at the far left
The faceplate before being painted black and engraved, and the rear panel with 3mm holes for the LED's to be mounted for backlighting.
The flaps guage prototype assembled and being tested. This was using a phidgets servo board, which i no longer use and all are run using Arduino and DCS-BIOS