For as long as he can remember, Kjetil Mathisen has been fascinated with flying machines. As a kid he spent most of his time playing with model airplanes, helicopters and virtual flight simulators, but as an adult he has taken his passion to a whole new level by building his very own scale replica of a Boeing 737 cockpit.
32-year-old Kjetil, from Norway, had been talking with his buddy Stian Alexander Hoddevik about building an airplane cockpit for a long time, until one day, about two years ago, when they finally decided to go through with it. At first they wanted to build a McDonnell Douglas MD88 but quickly gave up on their plan after realizing the necessary parts were hard to come by and they would have had to build most of them from scratch. The Boeing 737, on the other hand, was much more popular and they could easily get their hands on all kinds of hardware, for the right price. They worked in Kjetil’s home for a few hours every day, building the cockpit from scratch and later installing all the necessary equipment, but as their creation took shape, it became clear they needed more room. The day Mathisen had to move his wife’s coffee table out of the living room to work on his project was the day they were forced to set up shop somewhere else. Luckily, the two airplane enthusiasts found an empty space close to Norway’s main airport that proved to be the perfect home for their “baby”.
