Miscellaneous Items (Nice-to-Have)
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@B744ERF While these items are not essential, they would be nice to have. Some airlines didn’t have pilots touch these items, but quite a few did, including United. IMO, they’d add just that little bit of realism that adds greatly to the overall feeling of the product.
1.) The Crew Oxygen Shutoff Valve and gauge on the left hand wall of the cockpit. United’s procedures had pilots open it during the preflight and close it at the end of the day. When fully opened, the gauge should show between 50-75 psi. When closed, obviously the gauge would just show 0.
Here is a picture of the shutoff valve and gauge:
2.) MAIN BATT CHARGER CB I understand that it is not realistic to ask you to simulate all circuit breakers. However... This one CB should be simulated, as it was used in the preflight checks by a number of airlines, including United. Basically, to check the main battery voltage, the FE would pull this circuit breaker and then press the DC METERS BATT button. The main batt voltage would then display between 25-32 volts and APU batt between 25-36 volts. The minimum was 23 volts. After this check, the FE would reset the MAIN BATT CHARGER CB.
3.) Lavatory Occupied Light Located on the sidewall of the P5 circuit breaker panel, this light would add some interesting ambience to flights in the sim. It could be implemented by just randomly lighting for 2-3min at a time. At the gate, the random lights could be triggered by engines off, parking brake set, Seatbelt signs off. In air, to avoid them coming on during takeoff or approach, they could be triggered by flaps/gear up, seatbelt signs off.
4.). CB Panel Smoke Light. This was a small push button right next to the above mentioned Lavatory Occupied Light. Upon pressing this button, lights inside of the CB panel would illuminate allowing the FE to look inside the various viewport windows for smoke. This would mostly just be an ambience enhancer/gimmick in sim, but still cool nonetheless.
The bulb is missing from this photo:
Here, you can see the bulb, as well as all of the smoke light windows:
Here is a better view of inside the window:
5.) More suitable headset for airliners I’m just being picky now, but the headsets scattered through the cockpit would probably be best depicted by something other than a set of David Clark’s. Something more along the lines of these:
This was the Sennheiser HMD 410 series of headsets. These actually came standard with new 747 Classics back in the day. You can see the model number on the headset stowage box behind observer in the cockpit here:
Looking forward to it,
Rob
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Back in the day the HD410s were a pretty decent set of hifi headphones. Linn Sondek (when they were still about £400) + NAD 3020 and a pair of HD410s was the thinking man's starter system.
http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/sennheiser-sl-range-headphones/6397
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Forgot to post it in the above post, but this would also be nice (accurate) to add. The emergency escape hatches were fitted with a cushion to help lower the noise in the cockpit. This cushion was held in place by good old-fashioned velcro strips. All of the museum birds I’ve seen have had this cushion long removed, or stolen. Anyways, it was there in the real bird during her operating days. May save some polygons if you decide to implement it.
Regards,
Rob
