SimSamurai has been delivering both BareBones and Complete RTA kits since the beginning of 2008. Much like a Samurai sword, each kit is hand crafted to perfection using both ancient and modern tools. We extend our thanks to all of our past kit cockpit buyers and to our DIY plan set buyer / builders. We are sure that you will love your cockpit as much as we loved making them for you! If you have photos you would like to share please send them in so that we can boost our website content. We will also be uploading much more product images and videos as time allows. If you are building a SimSamurai DIY kit please send us pictures! And please don’t forget to like us on Facebook. We greatly appreciate your help of spreading the word to new potential customers via social media outlets.
Please help us grow! Lastly, if you are a current or returning customer please take a moment to send us an email and tell us about your simming experiences so that others can learn what we have to offer! Our goal is to always improve ourselves while also sharing skills and knowledge with the sim community at large. We now post customer comments on our Testimonials page.
PRODUCT UPDATES, RELEASES AND RETIREMENTS
Check
out the SIM FLIGHT SYSTEMS page and the main dropdown menu below it for new product details and links
to all SimSamurai flight simulator cockpit designs! We also have a new 33 page Guide to Cockpit Carpentry to help all DIY builders. This booklet provides a lot of added help not included in the standard step-by-step builder manuals. You can grab the new (free) guidebook HERE.
As of 2016 we released some new designs such as the AirlinerX and the CS-2 Pegasus. We also released the CV-1 Chariot which was a custom one-off design modeled from a Cessna Caravan. It is currently being used by a Canadian airline for fire fighting training. We will be offering this design as a BareBones and RTA kit but have no plans to take it through the long, exhaustive process of making a DIY plan set and builder manual.
We have retired some of our other older, non-popular designs such as the original XS-1 Sora, the AX-1 Astro, and the LX-1 Orion. They are still available as DIY plan sets but until we re-polish them they are not in our main feature list. We felt it was time to put these back in the hangar and replace them with either similar upgrades like the AirlinerX or offer other unique designs that can keep our line up fresh while also filling a wide variety of needs. Our focus with cockpit enclosure designs has always been to provide a good spectrum that will cover many different needs.
We also have a few other plan sets in the works, mainly for a two-seat helicopter, an open cockpit (dual seat) and single seat fighter jet but they will probably not be released until sometime in 2017 simply because we never get asked about helicopter and fighter cockpits. We actually have at least 5 other cockpit design concepts in the works but because we have never made much off the plan set sales it is very hard to justify the time and expense to offer any new concepts as it takes a great deal of time to refine a design and release it to market as a DIY plan set.
Over the past few years we have also considered designing both a single seat and dual seat Boeing 737 style cockpit design that would be very specific to that aircraft alone. We have often wondered if this was something we should have done years ago as for whatever reason a very large percentage of simmers seem to want to build a 737 sim yet our thoughts are that 95% of those people who routinely fly the 737 (via software such as PMDG or iFly or ProSim) will most likely never actually have the vast amount of money required to build a 100% realistic 737 simulator. Even a detailed single seat panel set up with realistic equipment easily costs over $5,000 (not including computer and monitors) and a full scale dual seat 737 cockpit with all hardware can easily cost $40,000 or more to finish out. Some DIY builders spend over $60,000.
In short, our experience has shown that less than 1% of simmers worldwide will ever go to this expense and most that do will mix and match various components together to save costs. Add to this fact that there are already many vendors who sell 737 equipment and it makes for an extremely narrow market. And because of the high costs most people just build the main panel and then never wind up enclosing it in a realistic shell. And for those very few who do, they commonly either build their own shell from various free plans and drawings scattered across the internet or they are one of the lucky few who are able to buy a real aircraft surplus cockpit shell.
Because of these reasons we have always steered clear of the 737 cult following as there are just too many variables and too many competitors in the marketplace, all of whom must compete for a very very small amount of customers world-wide. So while the demand for 737 products may be one of the highest of all sim products, the reality is that the market is already saturated. Add to this fact that to build a 737 shell alone would take several months and this is a very high cost item which the customer or builder must endure. So yeah,..no dice!
UGTAFS UPDATES / REVISIONS / DISCOUNTS
The current FS9 / FSX UGTAFS is offered as a tab – chaptered PDF file for only $22.00. And for the vast amount of information that is included within it, this is an amazing deal. The low cost 300+ page.pdf file was also made to help all the foreign customers
who cringe at the high overseas shipping costs for the 3lb print version. For more information on the UGTAFS please see its own product page and the Specials page.
We are still on schedule to release a totally new UGTAFS for Prepar3D only in late 2016. The cost for new customers will be $28 and there will be a 50% discount for all previous FS2004 / FSX UGTAFS customers.
IN-FLIGHT BIBLE UPDATES
If
you are a previous In-Flight Bible customer you can buy the current IFB
Upgrade 3-pack for $15.00 or for $6 each. They all include many more pages of rules, regulations, charts, and diagrams. Also offered is the new Multi-Engine Bible which is an additional 35 pages!
That’s all the updates for now folks. Go fly..and be safe up there!
