Home built simulators
I was watching discovery wings the other night and there was a 1hr special on people who had built their own full size sims at home, as someone with a healthy interest in aviation I was amazed at the levels of sophistication these guys had engineered into their spare rooms - one had what looked like a full 767 cockpit, granted non-motion, but otherwise complete running off of a bank of PC's connected to the controls and instruments through some kind of special circuit card - the name for which I have forgotten. I found the level of home built technology amazing but was somewhat disturbed by their desire to don uniforms and talk to an imaginary ATC through a mike system etc.. I just wondered how common this hoby is, are there many people out there who go to these kinds of lengths to fulfill boy hood dreams? Has anyone who started off down this particular hobby road ever actually made it into the real thing?