A Boeing 737 in the house

Walter Wijnhoven

Nico Weesjes (1944) started his career as a ‘ship’s carpenter’. In the service of a luxury yacht builder, he built a complete wooden yacht for himself. He then started his own company in shop interior construction, which he sold in 1996 for health reasons. Sitting still was not an option and after building a pipe organ that he worked on for 968 hours, it was time for a new project: a flight simulator. In between, he recovered from Kahler’s disease and a heart operation. “I was very lucky that I survived,” he says.

PILOT LICENSE
From 1975 to 1981, Nico flew a Robin and a Piper Cherokee at the Rotterdam flying club. He visited major customers of his company in the Netherlands and surrounding areas. After he was no longer able to achieve the annual minimum number of flying hours, he started flying on the computer. “In addition to my pilot’s license, I also have my radio telephony license (RT). Language and procedures are all the same in aviation, whether you are in a Jumbo or a Piper. I enjoy that now.”

FROM FOKKER TO BOEING
Nico had already ‘played’ with Microsoft’s flight simulator and came into contact with another flight-simmer who built a physical flight simulator at InHolland University of Applied Sciences. “I took over their old Fokker 28, an original half-sawed cockpit. At a simulator builder I could take the measurements of real simulators and take photos, because I make almost everything myself. The Yoke (flight control), for example, is made of sewer pipe. I gradually remade everything from (demolition) wood.” After the Fokker came the Boeing. “My contact at InHolland was going to make a flight simulator of the B737 himself. He developed parts for it that I could start with.”

HCC KNOWHOW
To build a cockpit, knowledge of electronics and computers is required. “You can find all sorts of things on the internet, but it is still highly recommended to join a flight sim club for know-how and support”, says Nico, who has been a member of HCC and HCC!flightsimulator for many years. “Dirk Simon and others from FlightSim Rijnmond know a lot about software and programs. Unfortunately, there are only a few cockpit builders like me. You can find a thousand and one cockpits on the internet, but everyone with two screens and a throttle already has one.”
At HCC!flightsimulator, Nico was confronted with a logistical problem. “The idea is to take your stuff with you and fly together, but you don’t just take 800 kilos to meetings and fairs. That’s why I set up a WhatsApp group with a few fanatic cockpit builders, including a few pilots.”

Nico Weesjes in his self-built cockpit

SOFTWARE AND BEAMERS
Last year Nico bought a new computer and installed no less than thirty software programs for this purpose. “I have two PCs, one with Windows 10 and one with Windows 11. All the software is on these, including Prepar3D v5, ProSim 737 v2.29 and Scenery ORBX.” His PCs control three HDshort throw projectors on. The landscape is projected on a 300 inch projection wall of 7.5 by 1.75 meters. Fourteen screens are needed for the instruments and work screens.
“The software for the landscape is very complicated. If you hang three projectors above your cockpit and project on a round wall, you get three ‘bananas’, that has to be a nice plane. That software, Fly Elise Immersive Display PRO, I was the first in the Netherlands to have.”

TURBULENCE
“I fly with real weatherthe weather at that moment at the place where you are flying. This is activated via the weather program ActiveSky. Sometimes it really goes wild. A neighbor who was flying along recently said: ‘Can you please turn that off, because I’m not feeling well’. It is the combination of a 7.5 meter screen wall and nine speakers that everything comes at you, a vibrating floor thanks to the butt kicker and two engines that suggest turbulence. That makes it super realistic. I’ve also helped people overcome their fear of flying. I showed them that there’s nothing wrong if you’re at 30,000 feet and the engines fail, with dozens of airports around you.”

CAR FERRIES
On the way to a holiday in Jordan, Nico was allowed to fly in a real cockpit once. “It wobbles a little bit when taking off, but a simulator that stands on concrete doesn’t do that. I lay awake at night thinking about it and came up with the idea of ​​placing my cockpit on car springs. I welded a frame to reinforce the floor and selected car springs from the scrapyard. I jacked everything up with the jack from my camper and placed four springs underneath from an Opel Corsa that also weighs about 900 kilos. I copied the software from the car racing community, they have a movable seat like that. To make it move in turbulence, five software programs run in succession and when I fly, I now also get that effect. I am the only one in the world who does this with an investment of twelve hundred euros.”

WINDSCREEN WIPERS
“When am I completely finished? I am approaching the edge of perfection and am now working on details. Like these windscreen wipers that I bought at Ali Express and for which I am also making a motor. Someone from the KLM Flight Academy – a pilot himself – was here and flew with me for an hour. I told him that I wanted to adjust the turbulence a bit, but he said: ‘Don’t do anything else, it’s perfect as it is’. I have also had pilots here to practice, such as a pilot who had been out of the game for a while. Everything here works one-on-one, from radio traffic to navigation and beacons. There are 23,000 airports on my computer where I can land and take off, about ten of which have nice scenery.”

Nico built the simulator all by himself

FLYING ALONG FOR A LITTLE
“Do you like to fly ‘a bit’?”, asks Nico. Of course! After Nico has put on his uniform (talking about realistic!) we take a seat on original aircraft seats from a Fokker 28. “You can buy replicas, but then you pay four thousand euros per seat”, Nico knows. “I bought two old seats, overhauled them and upholstered them. Look, this is the autopilot”, he points. “With this you can set everything such as direction, altitude and speed. On the control panel you can see whether all the control organs are working. And what a real pilot cannot do and I can: here are all the function buttons for the flight simulator such as for Air Traffic Control (ATC), then you can see which commands you get.”

PUSHBACK CART
Nico presses a button to look around. “Look, that’s us, that KLM plane. A pilot always has to walk around his plane first to see if everything works. I can see that right away. The brake flaps go up. Now we’ll take a look from the tower and you can see us standing there. I turn on the engines for the turbulence. There’s a pushback-cart that comes to us and then you feel it hook up. We take the device off the parking brake off and there comes the cart.. Do you feel it?” Indeed we notice a very realistic shock and we drive on to the runway.

CRASHING WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES
We join the back of the line. Nico controls the nose wheel with his left hand while taxiing. You hear and feel the wheels bumping. “Sometimes I make a joke: once on the taxiway I cut a piece through the grass and then you feel the wheels leaving the concrete one by one. Then I have to accelerate, because the resistance in the grass is greater, that’s how realistic it is.” We get permission from the tower, we take off and the wheels go up. Once at the right speed and height the flaps can go in. If something goes wrong a signal sounds, such as the stall protection. “I can call up any malfunction or random “create,” Nico explains. “Hydraulic, electric, or if a door flies off, for example. Everything that is also possible in a real airplane. You can even crash if you want, but fortunately without consequences.”

SAFELY LANDED
Here we go! Below us we see the coastline of the North Sea, we fly over the Kagerplassen and see the Braassemermeer. Then we are startled by a loud ‘toottoottoot’, it turns out to be a warning that the autopilot is now off. Near the Haarlemmeerpolder an oncoming vehicle suddenly comes our way. “It’s going to go over me in a minute”, Nico sees. “If you fly with air traffic control you don’t have to worry about that and you are warned.” We make a circle, make a turn to the right and immediately see the horizon change. Nico points out other aircraft in the area, at 900 and 1,900 feet. “In principle we can let it land fully automatically but that’s not really fun.” Captain Nico prefers to do it himself and a little later we have landed safely!

WEBSITE AND YOUTUBE
On his website www.phnic.eu (already over 140,000 visitors) Nico shares everything about his cockpit, and how he makes all the parts himself, with other hobbyists and interested parties. And on his YouTube channel (already over 52,000 views) there is a movie about the cockpit and the self-developed moving floor that is unique in the world.

The ‘motion floor’ with servo motor. This is how you get realistic turbulence

Scan the QR code to watch the video. Nico really enjoys receiving responses from all over the world, sometimes an A4 with a whole story. “Like from a lawyer from Buenos Aires (in Portuguese), a renowned film producer from Mexico and a response entirely in Russian that I can’t even read without Google Translate! I come across all kinds of superlatives, it makes me feel embarrassed.” Some examples: ‘You, Sir, are insane… in a good way’. ‘How come this is so underrated? This guy is a genius.’ ‘This is my absolute dream. Amazing job!’.

STEWARDESS WANTED
What does wife Joke think of the Boeing 737 in the house? Nico: “She thinks it’s fine, as long as she doesn’t have to come along. Every now and then I’ve come out of the garage grumpy or screaming mad and she had a hard time with that. But she’s completely behind it, you know. I have a stewardess bell in the cockpit and when I press it, the bell in the kitchen rings. But the only one who responds is the dog, it’s our old doorbell and he thinks someone is at the door.” So there’s no real stewardess yet, but anyone who feels called upon can check in at ‘Kamerik Airport’.