Working 1960's Weather Radar!

[skyline223]

Hey guys,

I did a little hack to an old RCA 1960's weather radar for our 727 simulator. I used a $10 B&W CRT TV from eBay, a VGA to RCA adapter box, and of course, the old WX radar. The concept is pretty simple, but it works very very well. The WX gauge is from Captain Sim. Heres a quick picture of it not yet mounted. I will post more pictures of the construction process if anyone is interested.
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[Jordan Farmer]

thats a great idea, i bet it looks brilliant!I would love to know how it was done!

Jordan

[skyline223]

Thanks! Well here's a little timeline
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-The $10 B&W TV I bought off eBay

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Here is the RCA weather radar with the beginning of its cover removed. I got it from oncealoft.com

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Here is the CRT stripped of its outer casing and running as a monitor on my computer. Also, this is the Captain Sim weather radar running simply as a gauge in FSX.

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Here is the RCA weather radar faceplate removed from the unit. I got really lucky here as the whole front plate came off as one nice big piece without too much trouble. Also, I did not go to the trouble to interface knobs on the radar as I do not really need that much control over it.

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And here is the CRT, with its circuit board, mounted to the RCA weather radar faceplate. I just mounted the tube using it's original mount and some wood blocks.

Then, the radar was plugged into the RCA to VGA adapter, and then into the computer's graphics card. Windows recognizes this as a standard VGA monitor. Fire up FSX, load a flight, position the Captain Sim WXR gauge (I have saved the positioning in a saved flight) and voila!

And here is the VGA to RCA adapter that I used - Get it here

All of the components fit nicely inside the original casing that the RCA weather radar came in. Its almost plug and play at this point! And I built it all for just under $100! I will post some more pictures once I get the WX radar mounted in the sim.

[BlackWidow]

That is so cool. Great job and thanks for posting this.