Captains Seat Design

[Geremy Britton]

Hi,

I'm in the process of building my main pilot seat. I am using a car seat mounted on an MDF box. But my question is i plan to put wheels on the bottom of the box so it can slide and i will make tracks for them to follow out of an MDF sheet on the floor. So How do you manage to keep the seat from falling backwards because most car seats (well mine is) are back heavy and when i sit on it as well i have a terrible vision of me pushing on the rudder in takeoff and then finding myself laid on the floor seat and all. With the plane having no captain. :D PULL UP! :D

Can anybody give me some suggestions to overcome this?

[Michael Carter]

You'll either have to load the front of the seat with weight underneath, or have some sort of rear support for the box.

The 2x4's under my seat legs not only bring the seat up to the correct height for me to see correctly, they aslo stabilize the seat fore and aft.

Without those 2x4's (or bolting it to the floor), mine was on the verge of falling over backwards too.

[Mike.Powell]

Use captive rails.

[QF6228]

I think hearing about a story of the captain falling over during takeoff would be great :D

[Westozy]

Captive rails are the best bet as Mike says. Use some steel 'C' channel fixed to the floor on it's side and make sure your wheels are a snug fit but not tight in the channel and your seat will travel without tilting. If you used four roller bearings as wheels, a sheet metal shop could fold some channel to the exact size needed or you might be able to get bearings that fit already available channel sizes.
(Damien, Bindook is coming over for a fly tonight. He says he can't get on the net much where he is but says g'day)

Gwyn