You are my inspiration, J... glad to see you're still plugging away at this amazing project.
Are you doing all this without a Dremel tool? I bought my first one a few months ago and it changed my life...

I'm almost ready to start mine, but other than finishing my projector, I'm still a bit hung up on the design, because I'm trying to make my pit as generic as possible, yet still be workable with a variety of different models. Then there's the expandibility factor: I don't want to have to start over to add active mechanical gauges, etc. later on (I really want to go with the VC gauges at first, because for me, the look of each plane's VC is what really gives me the immersion I'm looking for; we'll see, though, if the image quality makes that workable. I guess that's why i want to make the projector first).
I might post some design sketches soon, to see what you guys think... it's going to be a little different from what I've seen out there so far.