Folks, welcome to pictures of the world's first amateur built cross-cockpit collimated display!

This project was constructed by Wayne Ledzian and myself (Gene Buckle)

Here's some YouTube videos that Wayne & I took last night (11/20/2010)
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4
Pulling down the mirror for the first time:
Video 5

In flight:
Video 6

Walk-around: (added 22Nov10)
Walk Around

New page added - 28Nov10 Page 2

Gene Buckle - geneb@deltasoft.com

(all descriptive text is referring to the image below the text)

This is the framework for the spherical section collimating mirror. The viewable area is 60 degrees wide by 40 degrees high. The horizontal field of view is delinated by the curved ribs that are at the beginning of the curved sections on the ends.

This was taken right after we had the mirror applied. We used a spray adhesive to hold the mylar in place.

Wayne is using a J-roller to improve the bond between the mylar and the face frame.

This is the test configuration for the mirror. We set it up inside the arc of my original projection screen.

Here are Rob & Wayne positioning the screen in front of the mirror. The screen is front projected.

This is the operation position of the screen. It is actually higher than it appears - it doesn't block your vision while you're in the seat - in fact, you can't even see it unless you look up at it.

You can see here how wrinkled the screen is. It's just kraft paper that's been wrapped around the screen shape and then stapled into position. It accounts for 99% of the distortion seen while using the mirror. The video taken really can't do it justice due to how we positioned the camera.

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Here you can see the mirror is being drawn down by vacuum in order to form the spherical section shape. You can see a slight line in the mylar toward the right edge- that's the interior framing.
We don't expect any usable image outside of that frame. For the full 180 degree version you'll never see the framework.

This shows the screen from behind and how it reflects to the mirror. It's impossible to tell from this photo, but everything is properly aligned and it looks fantastic!

Here's Wayne flying around Tacoma in the Cessna 172P. We used FSX for the testing. The image is a bit blurry as the camera shutter was open for 2 seconds or so and I wasn't using a tripod.

Here's the same image, but taken with a flash.