Introduction
The F-16 Fighting Falcon is provided with an HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick), to let the pilot have control on almost all the functions he may need, without even moving a hand. There are though some quite useful functions that the pilot needs several times throughout the flight, that are not available directly from the Throttle and Stick. Autopilot management is possibly the most common one, but also RF emission and Maser Arm can be quite recurrent.
The aforementioned functions are all available through the MISC panel which is located under the left eyebrow and is shown in the next figure.
Parts needed
Printed Circuit Board
The first thing one needs to define is the printed circuit board and interface. There are several almost plug-n-play solutions available on the market since I wanted a rather simple solution and easy to expand, I chose the one JShepard builds, available here:
http://psfalcon.blogspot.com.es
I already have the MainBoard, and the ICP panel (F-16 ICP panel case), hence I only needed a simple 16 Digital I/O expander.
The 16 Digital I/O is provided with 16 I/O Pins, 4 5V pins (which I will not need), 8 ground pins, a 5 pin port (+5V, Ground, Interrupt, SDA SCD), and a symmetric port, to be used in case of multiple boards on the channel (daisy chain).
Panel
The second part required is the panel. Hispapanel F-16 Misc Block 50 delivers realistic replicas, they are made of white acrylic (the front most, engraved panel), while the other two backplates are made of transparent acrylic.
I chose to model the F-16 block 50. Hispapanel comes with a cover for the ADV mode button, which fits perfectly on the (optional) RAFI19H pushbutton.
As far as the case is concerned, my design is based on MDF panel with a black acrylic cover.
Parts
The panel has:
- 4 three way switches, ON-ON-ON.
- 1 switch ON-ON.
- 1 RAFI19H push button with 2 LEDS (one amber, one green).
- 1 green LED (for the ECM).
- 1 pushbutton (ALT RELEASE).
Moreover, to add backlights:
- 1 switch.
- 14 green LEDS.
- 14 120Ω resistors.
Design
In order to assess the design I created a CAD model of the assembly.
Backlighting
The panel is mainly composed of switches, therefore the backlight is an important feature to add. Hispapanel comes with two backplates, which resulted quite helpful to do the job.
In order to add backlight circuit I used a manual drill to create the required holes (two for each LED). The backlight circuit is simply a parallel of 14 LEDs, each with a 120Ω resistor to reduce current on it.
MDF Case
The panel is made of MDF, the first part of the process is to cut all parts. Then a hand of white primer is painted on all the parts; white glue is then used to join everything together. Once the glue dried out, 2 hands of primer, and 3 of the final anthracite color were painted.
Wiring
While the Case dries out, I carried out the wiring of the Panel and switches with the PCB. The figure below shows the criteria I used.
I wired +5V and ground coming from an auxiliary CPU Power supply, while, the SDC SCL go straight to the MainBoard PCB.
I didn’t use the INT option (described here).
As far as the three-way switches wiring is concerned, I followed the instructions reported here.
Final Assembly
Once all parts have been wired, painted, and glued together, the final assembly takes place.
I chose to use an acrylic black plastic cover on the left-hand side of the case. In order to give it the right shape, I heated it in my oven.
The final result is shown in the next pictures.
My desktop cockpit
This is how my desktop looks like with the F-16Misc panel installed.
giovannimedici 