What do you guys think of me building a 727 sim?

No project Magenta needed that

William If you decide to build B727 cockpit. You would be one of the rarest. Of course you can build a B727... If you are willing to become a excessive spender. You could Buy B737-200 type of Panel, Pedestal, or Overhead since it has almost exactly same type as B727 This was the only luckiest thing you could get. Unfortunately, Sorry there isnt any of 727 gauge type display from Project Magenta. But, I assure that you can create your own gauge inputs from some type of program called Panel maker (I think) and that would work. I remembered Back then, Before FDS was born, I used to build a B727 (in 1998) and that produce a lot of troubles for me, so I torn it down. and rebuild a B767-300 cockpit. Maybe afterall, when I am done building B767, I will start back on building B727 with real function gauges. That is a dream and not yet to be determined! Anyway, Good luck on it and hope you could have your B727 to fly.

I am getting a throttle quad from a ex united 727-200 for $750. Also I talked to the people over at sim instruments and they plan on doing 727 gauges made to order. They cost somewhere near $200 a peice. They will have a controller and dll that will work with fs also they plan on making a generic input output controller like fsbus or epic. That can be programmed via gui or I assume VB or C++. Yes I plan on building it all. But I am starting out slow. My plan is to take years to complete this. I dont want it looking cheap. But its just a dream for now. My buddy rob says he can help me hook up my throttle quad when I get it. I am just pondering now how do I get the trim wheels to work properly? I just love heavy iron (aluminum heh). The 727 is a true beast! Fast, Agile, and a gas guzzler! Everything Americans want!

The reason I asked about the sim is I dont wanna get laughed at by building a bird thats outdated and 40 plus years old

William,>I am just pondering now how do I get the trim wheels to work >properly? That is one of other reason why I surrender my old B727. I wasn't able to gather all of information according to the function of each panels, quadrants, yoke and etc. Well, I can't say how you want your trim wheels to work. It depends on how much degree of turn that you wanted on your trim wheels. Based on my experience, I made trimwheels out of wood by drawing diameter in circle (I forgot the inches) and mount in the threaded rod along with 3" gear and have Potentiometer with 1" gear on shaft inside of the center pedestal. It works well, but only turn up to 90 degree based on ratio of turn. I don't think a real B727 have 90 degree of turn for trim wheels. That is the idea I could share out with you. You might want to try do some more reaserch on it. I still love B727 as of today, I remember back then where I used to live before I move to Texas. There is a park nearby airport where you could watch airplanes taking off or landing at both direction at about 100 feet in distance. Most of time, when I am off from work I would drive down to park and hoping to see any of B727 taking off during dusk at south direction because I love to listen and watch the tri-engines roaring-gas-guzzler out of that beast during the sunset. isn that a beauty?

William Its not like you re driving a 1960 Volkswagen Beetle. (Hope Not! :-lol) Well B727 may be old, but is still a beauty and is active as of today. I forgot to make a suggestion to you from the previous discussion on this topic. You might want to check through e-bay motor-aviation. Because, I notice there are lot of B727 panel parts that are selling from price range between $9.00 to $100. I believe there are parts you might be interested to buy.

>The reason I asked about the sim is I dont wanna get laughed>at by building a bird thats outdated and 40 plus years oldIsnt the real reason to build these to actually enchange *your* simulator experience? I fly a 1976 C172, it's an old bird, but heck, it's the flying I love, not the seat I am sitting at.. It works and I can see through the windows, that's cool :-)Who cares what others say? If you like the "real iron" instead of the "nintendos", heck with the others. That's the reason I am pondering the king air / small twin -type setup myself - when I fly the simulator I dont want to just watch the machine fly itself, but rather do the flying by hand. But I am sure there's a lot of interesting stuff in the more computerized planes too, it's all about what interests you.It's a compromise between your available budget, the information you can find about the plane and what technical skills you have. And of how much time you can put in it.Besides, they will think you are out of your mind to build a home cockpit anyway :)/Tuomas

Hi William,if you get a 727 built with working analog gauges - you will be a hero - the reason "we" are building 737 NG