Going Wild
Deciding to go for a home cockpit already is a crazy idea. But the real insanity starts after that…
We all have our very favorite aircrafts, but not all of them are… realistic to build. In my case there are two wonderful candidates fighting for 1st place:
Boeing 747-400/747-8
It’s the queen. And she’s amazing, beautiful and gives you that very special feeling piloting a huge building. Many big airlines have flown this gem in and out airports all over the world, so there are a lot of routes to choose from.
But: The 747 is one of THEE long haulers, so the shortest flights are either unrealistic or exceptional/special routes like LH1152/LH1153. Common flight times would be more like 6+ hours. Also dues to its size and weight there are much less airports available for the queen, unfortunately some of my favorite destinations would not be appropriate (GCLA, LOWS, EDLN for example).
Douglas DC-6B
That’s something very personal. I worked at several Red Bull locations for years, including the two hangars at LOWS. No surprise I fell in love with “The Diva”. Imagine my excitment when PMDG released their DC-6 for MSFS…
Right now it is the aircraft I spent most time with in MSFS, which is no wonder since it is one of the very first products of this quality for the new platform. Even when just putting on headphones and starting the engines the big smile is running circles around my head…
But: It’s a full analog flight deck. Even just one of those instruments is an incredible effort to build.
What both flight decks have in common: they’re big. In fact, they’re bigger than what I could fit into the space I have available in the cellar.
So let’s throw two more candidate classes into the mix:
Twin Engine Business Aircraft
Cessna Citation CJ4/Citation/Longitude, Bombardier Learjet 45/75, Dassault Falcon 7X/8X/2000, just to name a few. They’re small, versatile, fast and fun to fly. They usually are equipped with modern, cutting edge avionics at least one generation ahead of airliners. It’s safe to state every airfield with a paved runway will be appropriate for this kind of aircrafts.
But: cutting edge also means it’s very unlikely there is information or even a study level implementation is available. This would leave me with products picturing older generations, which would not be a problem at all – but even then there are not really models available meeting that quality.
Narrow Body Twin Engine Airliner
Probably the most built home cockpit of all times is the one of the Boeing 737. There is an insane amount of information available, and instrumentation as well. Any airport with at least ~1500m can be a 737 destination – and there are many!
The flight deck is about 2,5m wide, this would be a very tight fit, but doable from what I could tell yet. It’s also in development by PMDG and planned to be released this year…
Conclusion
Although I love the 747 and the DC-6 they are rather unrealistic to build into my cellar so far. So the ranking at the moment should be 737-800 in first place, one of the twin business jets second. But you never know. Looking forward to read through this in x years again 😉
