Boeing 727

By Andrew Herd (4 June 2004)

his addon is an old friend and without any shadow of a doubt, the FS2004 version is a classic. When I reviewed the package for FS2002, I had some reservations about the flight model, but the upgrade has eliminated any complaints I might have had and has transformed the simulation into the best medium airliner I have seen for Flight Simulator. Rarely have I come across an addon which puts such a grin on my face as this one, so without any messing about I am going to give it a 2004 Armchair Aviator Award.

The jet age began in 1952 with the flight of the de Havilland Comet, but it took off with the Boeing 727, a plane which was forecast to sell 250 hulls and ended up selling nearly eight times that number. The 727 was not only the first trijet introduced into commercial service, it was the best selling jet airliner right up to the 1980s - a record it would still hold were it not for the Boeing 737. And yet the strangest thing about the 727 is that it nearly didn't get built at all, because Boeing were worried it might not sell.

The prototype 727 flew on February 9th 1963. When production ended in August 1984, the 727 fleet was carrying 13 million passengers each month and had carried four billion in all, which makes you wonder why there were any doubts about the project’s financial viability - but remember how different the world was forty years ago. As recently as 2001, nearly 1300 727s were still in service and you can still see the first one they built, which flew continuously with United from 1964 to 1991, before earning its rest in the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Apart from being one of the most attractive aircraft ever designed (though I think the Caravelle is my all time favorite) the 727 had a sophisticated wing with huge triple-slotted trailing edge Fowler flaps and leading-edge slats, which gave it low-speed landing and takeoff performance that were considered good for a commercial jet of its day.

Production began with the 100 series, of which 571 were sold, the majority in a dedicated passenger configuration, though the 100C had a side cargo door, allowing it to carry mixed loads. The 727-200 was stretched to take up to 189 passengers and was the most popular variant, with 1245 sold. The most noteworthy of these was the Advanced 727-200 which flew in May 1971 with "wide-body" restyling, more powerful engines and bigger tanks; these considerably enhanced its payload/range capability, improved its takeoff performance and reduced its quite considerable noise footprint. Some idea of the performance increment can be gained from comparing the gross weight of the 100 series (160,000 pounds) with that of the heaviest variant's gross weight which was 30% greater at 210,000 pounds.

Boeing are justifiably proud of the fact that 101 different airline customers purchased new 727s and while the major U.S. airlines have retired their oldest airframes, many are still operating their younger 727-200s. Forty years after the plane first took to the skies, the Achilles' heel of this old lady is high fuel consumption and the racket she makes; so many 727s have been retro-fitted with "hush kits" to keep them legal. By 2005, all the majors will have retired their fleets, but there is little doubt that 'twenty-sevens' will continue to see service with second and third tier airlines for decades to come.

From the moment I selected the plane and heard the beautifully clipped tones of the stewardess announcing, ‘Welcome aboard this Boeing 727…’ I knew the addon was in a league apart. I do not know where they got hold of that girl (there is an option to have the announcements in German too), but that is exactly how British air stewardesses of the period sounded. I should know, because that is what my mother did. Then the panel loads and it was clear we weren’t in Kansas any more. Yep, this isn't some kind of computer-driven pilot-proof technofest, it is real steel and we are in control. So pull on your boots and get ready to do some real flying.

The full '727 Pro' package is massive 79.2 Mb download from the Captain Simulations website and costs $36.95. CD versions are also available to order for users without broadband and I am sure that many people will opt for this. Though the developers give the minimum system requirement as a 600 MHz Pentium with 128 Mb of RAM, a 16 Mb 3D video card and Windows 98 or better; and a recommended spec being a 1.8 GHz Pentium with 512 Mb of RAM, a 64 Mb 3D video card and Windows XP, I would suggest running the plane on the fastest, cleanest PC you can lay your hands on, because the one disadvantage of the 727 is that it is a resource hog. That being said, as long as you don’t try anything foolish like running another app at the same time as Flight Simulator, you should get good frame rates – but I wouldn’t personally recommend trying it on anything less than a 1.8 gig Pentium and even then, wouldn’t advise using the virtual cockpit version and would suggest pulling some of the display sliders to the left.

After downloading the file and running the installation, it is necessary to use an activation applet before using the plane, or all the instruments will be frozen. The applet sends your name and email address to Captain Simulations, who return a code, which is copied back into the applet and 'activates the plane'. The applet is found in the "Legendary 727" program group, along with a link to the manuals. I didn't have any trouble with the installation process, which ran very smoothly.

There are three pdf manuals: a 31 page systems manual; a 38 page operations manual; and a 9 page training manual, which was littered with spelling mistakes all of which have made it through to the FS2004 version intact. As usual with more complex packages, it is a good idea to read the documentation, although to be fair, anyone with a reasonable amount of FS experience ought to be able to load the 727 and fly it straight away.

Captain Simulations offer a choice of four different planes, the -100 and the -200, in both cargo and passenger versions, with a total of 20 liveries, ranging from Pan Am, British Airways and TWA to my favorite, Cougar. As part of the package you get an applet called '727TCE' which allows you to configure all kinds of options such as call sign, cargo, passenger and fuel load, seat capacity, special effects, crew language, engine fit and whether the plane has a VC or not. There are more than 100 freeware repaints on offer, so it is unlikely that your favourite airline won’t be available. All the period paint schemes are extremely pleasing and the textures supplied with the package show them off really well.

Everything is animated (including the wipers) and there are full reflective textures. The complicated combination of high lift devices on the leading edge has been modelled perfectly and you get both the Kruger flaps on the outer edge, as well as the slats on the inner edge - with everything down, the sim looks like the wing is coming apart, just like the real thing. One of the Easter Eggs in the package is triggered by clicking on the captain's window handle, which opens the window .

The flight model is outstanding in the FS2004 version and gives a particularly good impression of what it is like to get behind the drag curve in a swept wing jet. It was always said of the 727 that if you could see the runway, you could land on it, but getting it down in one piece depends on knowing the V-speeds and keeping ahead of the plane. Those flaps are so big that if deploying them suddenly on short final can convert an undershoot into an overshoot even on a 6000 foot runway, so you must pay attention to getting the plane stabilised in the correct configuration and at the right airspeed on long final, or you are likely to end up with more trouble than you can handle. Neither should you try landing the 727 at full load, unless you have a deathwish. On the other hand, climbs pose the opposite problem, which is that it is very easy to overspeed the aircraft, so you need to get used to pulling the throttles as the pitch lessens. I was unhappy with the flight model as it originally released, but now that it has been fixed, it has become a really good example of how a jet of this class should handle. Respect.

The 2D panel is absolutely outstanding. The gold standard for addons is high resolution digital photographs edited in high color in PhotoShop and although quality sims do come out from time to time with hand painted panels, they do not give the same feeling of being there as a good photoreal cockpit. The one issue with the 727 is that Captain Sim have chosen a viewpoint which lets you see right across the midline of the panel, but unfortunately puts you slightly too far back to see the instruments comfortably. Just about the only improvement I can think of would be to drop the passenger window views and substitute an ‘approach’ panel, but hey, who am I to criticise, this thing is near enough perfect as it is.

The 2D main panel has the usual lateral views associated with it and in addition to a selection bar, there are five other panels, which can be accessed by all the usual methods. The second officer's panel shown in the shot below is one of the more impressive views and it has dozens of working components. You will also find yourself using the overhead from time to time, with another hundred switches or so to play around with. For more screenshots of the panels, take a look at the last review we did of the 727, as none of the graphics have changed.

This is not a procedural sim, but all the useful systems have been implemented to a level that makes them fun to use, rather than a cause for geeky burrowing through endless documentation. I suspect that this will turn out to be one of the great strengths of the 727, because it is possible to become an armchair expert on the plane after about forty minutes reading, and if you go back to it after using another package, you won't find yourself sitting helplessly wondering where some vital control is to be found. And yet, when you take in the main panel, the overhead and the second officer's panel, you have the guts of what makes a 727 work and while you wouldn't be able to fly a real one after using the sim, at the very least you would know your way around pretty well.

The autopilot is a thing of great wonder – it replicates an early system offering two-axis control, so the throttles are your responsibility. Despite the unit’s vintage, it is pleasingly tricky to use, boasting such subleties as a turn and pitch controller and aileron and elevator control engagement and it is about as good as you can expect an FS2004 autopilot to be.

There are dual NAV/COM units stacked one above the other, with the COM boxes on the right and the NAV tuners on the left; and don’t go looking for frequency flipping, because this is a real plane. Below the radios is the transponder, another interesting survivor from the age of steam. Just below the squawk window are a couple of knobs - the left one selects the first two digits and the right one the other pair. The unit can be switched through all its modes including standby. You also get an audio selector panel and a pair of ADFs, these being classics of period design, with spinning frequency displays of the sort that I thought had gone out with the Ark and a certain C150 of my acquaintance. Once you spot that it has three different switchable ranges, this is a seriously neat unit and the perfect antidote to the characterless digital crap that tends to accumulate in modern aircraft and which we would all sell our mothers to get. You even get a beat frequency oscillation switch, together with a choice of which ADF aerial you use, not that I imagine it makes any difference. I am not sure what the second ADF does, since the game doesn't support twin ADFs, but it is comforting to know it is there.

The APU popup looks just as hard treated as everything else on the bird. At top you have the fuel dump panel which will allow you to rain 2,300 pounds a minute of Avtur on the people below. Under that is the APU panel, which lets you, er... control the APU. Hours of enjoyment to be had here, if APUs are your thing.

You get a complete set of Captain, First and Second Officer, Stewardess and Ground Crew callouts, which are active as long as the relevant crew member switches on the audio panel are on and their volumes set correctly. Increasing the volume is done by shift-clicking on an audio knob, while ctrl-clicking reduces the volume and you can kill the green announcement line by pressing ctrl ~, which was the first thing I did when I loaded the sim. The default voice pack has English and German options.

There is an active VC in the FS2004 version, though I have my suspicions it was coded before the SDK came out and therefore may pose compatibility problems in future versions of FS. The VC has beautiful night lighting and everything seemed to work. There is no virtual cabin, as is sensibly the trend with recent airliner releases - these things look great, but are an extravagant waste of frames.

To get the real 727 experience, you need to strap speakers to your head and turn the sound right up, but the sound set is excellent. When you listen to it, reflect on what you are missing, because Boeing very nearly went for Rolls Royce Speys, which made the most wonderfully distinctive sound, to my ears at least. In the end they chose JT8Ds, which are fine machines, but sound like every other jet engine you ever heard.

The manuals include several very useful takeoff and descent profiles. These are in the "X marks the spot where you lower the first stage of flap" class, so an assiduous student should be greasing landings very early on.

I do not know how many packages I have reviewed for FS, but there are a few I go back to over and over again. This is one of them. Yep, it is very processor hungry, no denying that, but with so many features it could hardly be otherwise. Yes, it did take Captain Sim some time to get it right and I have been among their critics in the past, but you have to respect the way they have persisted and hunted the problems down one by one. As a developer, they know few equals and I can’t wait to see what they do next.

More info here