Grandad builds F-35 f light simulator... in garden shed
He splashes out £30,000 on cockpit of fighter plane
FOR most of us building a model plane is a fond childhood memory involving glue, sticky fingers and an awful lot of patience.
But Kenneth Mockford’s flight of fancy really took off – and led to him creating a £30,000 life-size version of an F-35 fighter jet simulator.
Painstaking grandfather Mr Mockford, 54, took four months to complete the project in his garden shed – relying solely on Google search photos for accuracy.
He credits his incredible attention to detail to Asperger syndrome, which he describes as his ‘superpower’.
Engineer Mr Mockford had no access to one of the £92million US-built stealth jets so he sifted through thousands of photos online to design the cockpit.
He said: ‘I spent many late nights constructing the F-35 in my garden shed then loaded it on a truck and moved it to a warehouse for flying.
‘I started the plane with just a fuselage, which I acquired. All of the other components like the seats, the main instrument panel – all the switches and buttons – I made because they are not available to buy. I’m a nutty engineer, basically.
‘Dimensions were a major issue for me because nobody is going to let me climb on their F-35. So I researched the internet for photographs and there were thousands of pilots sitting in cockpits.
‘I know how big my hand is and I know how big their hand is, so I know how big the scales are.’ Mr Mockford, from Burwell, Cambridgeshire, has previously built simulators of cockpits in a Boeing 737-800 and a Lynx helicopter.
He used a home-made laser cutter and a computer control system to help his precision work on the F-35.
‘Size-wise I think I have it all pretty close and the dimensions are about 95 per cent accurate,’ he said.
The former head of engineering at a healthcare firm quit his job in 2014 and, along with his father, who died in 2016, launched a flight simulation business called Sim2do.
Describing his Asperger syndrome, he said: ‘I always say that it is my gift. It is my superpower. Because I have that, I have the skill of being able to analyse things to the nth degree and I can see things in a way other people cannot.
‘Therefore I can see minute detail in a basic photograph and can see the detail before the general stuff. People with autism and Aspergers often get ridiculed because they are not the same as everyone else. But the general person looks at the world through normal eyes and we look at the world in 3D.’
The first F-35 in Britain arrived at RAF Marham in Norfolk in June. Mr Mockford, whose great-uncle invented the Mayday distress call, said: ‘I thought, “what great inspiration that they have only just arrived in the UK and they are the most modern fighter aircraft available today”.’ The fighters, a version of which will fly from the deck of the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carrier HMS Elizabeth, have a range of 1,300 miles and carry air-to-air missiles and laser-guided bombs. Mr Mockford’s simulator – named DOM02121 after a young enthusiast who helped to build it before succumbing to cancer – has raised questions about where the details for the realistic layout came from.
‘we have had loads of interest and the odd weird calls,’ he added. They imply that I’m getting secrets from somewhere, which I am not.’ Mr Mockford is from a long line of RAF servicemen. He said: ‘I guess you can say I was born with it in my blood.’
‘Basically I’m a nutty engineer’