It really was remarkable to fly in, esp. if one was fortunate enough to sit in the front rows of seats which had the wrap-around windows, or to be admitted to the cockpit as was often done for children when I flew from Japan to the U.S. on one (somewhere in my stuff is a set of plastic Pan Am wings which the pilot gave me).
This expression might actually have it's origins in the 747. I've heard in aerospace that "you don't fly until the paper weighs more than the plane"
Added that to my "Want to read" list on Goodreads.
My current setup (sorry Airbus not Boeing) is more modest and probably I'd enjoy to upgrade it even more but after point it really does become a bottomless pit where the endgame will be buying a decommissioned plane lol
Flight control https://www.thrustmaster.com/products/tca-captain-pack-x-air...
Flight control panel https://eu.winwingsim.com/view/goods-details.html?id=925
Light switches https://www.puairkorea.com/product/pu-autopilot-addon/
MCDU https://eu.winwingsim.com/view/goods-details.html?id=945
Rudders https://www.thrustmaster.com/products/tpr-thrustmaster-pendu...
Airbus Fenix remote on iPad https://fenixsim.com/a320/ + https://support.fenixsim.com/hc/en-us/articles/1245845642830...
16 key keyboard from Aliexpress, there are a lot of sellers
The rest are a beefy gaming PC
If you don't get the rudders then the whole thing (minus the gaming PC and iPad) can be bought for less than 1000€, even less on sale or second hand.
I came across it a few days and have been mesmerized with it ever since
But it is also easy to get started at home. Using some 42 inch televisions and old Android tablets, you can replicate a lot of the immersion very easily and have fun, see if you like it. Check out my open source projects and free apps for X-Plane and more details on building your own immersive flight simulator experience: https://www.waynepiekarski.net/projects/xplane.htm
Although be aware, these projects tend to turn more into an adventure building than actually flying much :)
I mean good ones were going for $1K a pop on eBay. I'm going to be rich, right?
After the market seemed to fall out, I did manage to sell perhaps a little over half of them at cost. What a pain to package and ship.
One guy though, I recall, had a flight-sim thing going and wanted to serve drinks with the real deal.
(And I have perhaps 8 or so of them around the house. A couple were converted to standing desks and have computers on them, one is actually in the kitchen and has alcohol in it, a few in the garage holding parts…)
