Amazing how quickly time flies when you are having fun! Here we already at the end of the second month of the year… The year has started off with a bang and we have some great news to share.

First off is AformX who are building an HFS Spitfire cockpit for the PARK OF MILITARY HISTORY PIVKA. We were hugely pleased when Saso Knez of AformX approached us late last year and purchased a build license and kit set. Saso and his team are very experienced simulator builders, having built some 30 VR based Pipistrel simulator training cockpits already. They have also built a MIG21 simulator for the museum in the past which has become a very popular attraction in the park.

The team’s experience really shows in the speed and quality of the build. In just over a month they have made some remarkable progress. They also adapted the fuselage length, making it longer and incorporating the radio access hatch. Here are some pics of their build taking shape.

The build is causing great excitement and the museum has posted the following article (roughly translated from Slovenian with Google Translate):

“SPITFIRE FLIGHT SIMULATOR IN MILITARY HISTORY PARK IN SPRING

The Supermarine Spitfire went down in history as one of the most famous, beautiful and famous aircraft of all time, and in battles in the sky it was also distinguished by exceptional aerodynamics and excellent maneuverability. During the Second World War, the mentioned planes also operated in the Slovenian sky. One of them, the Spitfire MJ116, piloted by guide Peter J. Clark, crashed on Ižanska cesta in Ljubljana in September 1944. The uninjured pilot managed to bounce back in time and land safely on the outskirts of Ljubljana, while the plane crashed soon after the fatal hit and sank into the swamp ground over the years. In 2019, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the downing of Spitfire, the Archaeological Research Consortium for Ljubljana, on behalf of the Museum and Galleries of the City of Ljubljana, successfully carried out the first part of lifting the remains of the aircraft. In the second part of the research, the archeological team managed to extract the heart of the plane, the famous Rolls-Royce engine Merlin 63. The excavated remains were then transported and exhibited in the Military History Park.

A permanent exhibition is also planned in the Park, and a new and technologically advanced flight simulator will be set up in the immediate vicinity of the wreckage of the aircraft before the summer. The simulator is being developed by the renowned Slovenian company AformX, which already has an extremely popular MiG-21 flight simulator among visitors in the Park. The new simulator will represent an upgraded and even more unique experience, it will be placed only a few meters away from the original Merlin engine, the cabin will be in a 1: 1 ratio, and visitors will be able to fly over photorealistic Slovenia using VR goggles. At the same time, it confirms the excellent cooperation between the Military History Park and the young company AformX from Trbovlje and the encouraging news of the year, which will be full of uncertainty and additional challenges for the entire economy, especially for museums and tourism.

From the hands of AformX soon in the Military History Park! New flight simulator with the legendary Supermarine Spitfire!

More to follow …”

It also provides a link to this great video: https://youtu.be/VqnrTK8uQCc

And in further news:

Slashing the cost of the build

In what has been a bit of a breakthrough we have been able to secure the 203 off SLS Nylon printed parts at an all-in price of €1700-00 (that’s about US$2000 and less than half of the Shapeways cost). That should reduce the cost of the overall build from around US$10k to US$8k, so quite a saving.

We have been able to do this by having nested the parts and taking up a full build block from the manufacturer.

The parts will be made on an industrial scale HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series printer in a grey PA12 Nylon. This gives a beautiful finish, greater toughness and slightly higher resolution than the EOS based SLS Nylon PA12 which you get from Shapeways. Shapeways itself charges a considerable premium (almost double!) for the HP process.

This link provides some more info on the printer, materials and process:

https://www8.hp.com/us/en/printers/3d-printers/products/multi-jet-technology.html

Whoo!! Gonna FLY!

To wrap up with the announcement for this blog, we are SOOO excited about the imminent release of the FlyingIron Spitfire Mk.IX for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020! We have been involved in the Beta testing and I can honestly say, it looks stunning and flies really well. It is early days for MSFS2020 development and so the full version with all the controls functional is not yet possible, but all the essential functions are modelled and it is joy. She’s going to be wonderful to fly in HFS cockpit, I cannot wait!