Ready For Pushback 747-200 2nd Generation

By Brian Smith (7 December 2004)

First, that putting together that plane looks like a logistical nightmare. Major parts of the plane have to be shipped from all over Europe for final assembly in France. And getting to France is only half the battle. With the narrow streets, it took an army of police officers just to get the pieces to the factory. What's that saying about too many cooks spoiling the broth? I am not suggesting that the Airbus project is impossible to pull off, but it is the most unwieldly assembly job I have ever seen.

Second, that the European engineers seemed baffled when they discovered after years of work on computer modeling that they could not improve on the design from Boeing's slide-rule days. They could not believe that the Boeing Jumbo Jet could have been built back in the days before computer modeling. One engineer remarked that no matter how they tweaked their designs, they kept finding that the Boeing 747 was built to the limits of aircraft design.

When it comes to Flight Simulator models, I must admit I am not a big fan of big iron. My time working for John Young at the Juneau Hub for Mountain Air made a believer out of me and I swore I would never climb behind the column of the auto-pilot beast again. Something about taking-off, hitting a switch, and just letting the plane fly has never been satisfying for me.

There have been a few planes that have lead me to stray from my propeller devotion, one of them is the Captain Sim 727. But you really can't find a virtual airline these days that has a fleet of 727s. Well, I am sure there is one, but they are getting harder to find, much like the 727 itself in the real world. So, as a result, I am not spending much time with my 727 save when I fly for FEDEX out of Memphis.

Recently while flying my DHC-2 Beaver out of Lake Hood, I happened to have all of Alaska's VATSIM airspace to myself and struck up a conversation with the controller. As fate would have it, he is a retired commercial pilot with time in the 727 and 747. I immediately made known my distaste for flying the big planes, and he mentioned the Ready for Pushback 747-200. He commented that in his 14,000 plus hours of flying the 747-200 he came to truly love flying that plane. He commented that in Flight Simulator he has never come across a plane that has so closely simulated a real jetliner.

My interest was piqued. He also said he had never purchased a flightsim add-on before this one. I am guilty of the opposite. If I see anything that looks interesting, I purchase it. I have become big fan of the Lago sceneries and planes as well.

So I went to the website for Ready for Pushback. The makers of this product have gone all out in making a high quality product. They have made this plane as real as it gets. I know that phrase has been overused quite a bit in the flightsim world, but this group has really done it. The panel consists of a main panel and several sub-panels.

The main panel comes in two varieties. Here is the "steam driven" panel with the old style round gauges. This is my panel preference, but there is also a "tape" style panel with the engine instruments on more of a digital style readout.

The manual for this plane is in excess of 300 pages. Oh no! You might think this is, like the building of the Airbus, an unwieldly task and a huge learning curve. Well, it is not as easy as ctrl-e, but if you can start the Captain Sim 727, you will have no trouble with the Ready for Pushback 747-200.

Recognizing that there is a learning curve, the developers have created about a half a dozen videos for you to watch to learn the basics of the 747-200. They include what to do if an engine fails or catches fire. Believe it or not, they have built in random failures that are rare, but you want to know how to combat them.

There is also a tutorial flight for the 747-200 that has you flying the plane from Seattle to Chicago. You should have no trouble with all the resources available, in getting this classic piece of big iron in the air.

So, you still with me? It is a great panel. But the model is excellent as well. The plane does all the things a plane should do when you pay for it. The animations are all there, including all the doors, surfaces, etc. The cargo version has the opening nose cone and opening cargo doors, complete with cargo boxes and palettes inside the plane. You have a great virtual cockpit and virtual cabin. You can leave the cockpit and stroll into the upper deck, Descend the spiral staircase to the first class cabin. The only thing you can't see is the lavatories. The views from the cabin are excellent. All in all, I have nothing I could complain about with the actual model. It is beautifully rendered.

You get a lot liveries included, but more than 60 total available for free on the website and elsewhere. There are also some utilities that go along with it. There is a fuel loader, a cargo loader, a passenger loader, a combination passenger/cargo loader, and a flight planner to maximize your fuel use. So you get a lot for you money.

How much? Well you can download the 56 megabyte download for $29.95, or they can mail you a CD-ROM version for $10 more.

My only concerns are actually for the developers in that their advertising might unnecessarily scare people away since it makes the plane more intimidating than it actually is. The website even advertises that this is not a plane for beginners. I agree, but if you have a year or two of flight simming under your belt, or you consider yourself a fanatic of flightsimming or flying, this product is a must have. My fear is that some might not consider purchasing this product for those same reasons.

I have flown a lot of planes that are supposed to have realistic start-up sequences and I have thrown my hands in the air in frustration with many of them. Not because the work is hard, or that it they are hard to learn, but because the panels are usually shoddy and hard to read. On most of those panels there is usually the same sequence. You get on batteries, you get external power, you start the APU, you start the engines and the generators and voila, you have power. But if you can't read the panel, how the heck can you do any of the steps you need to.

This panel is beautiful. I can read the gauges and all of the labels, and that makes all the difference. I have an antique PC. I use a Radeon 9200 and an AMD 800 MHz, and the panel works and looks great. My game takes no hit to the frame rates either, which tells me it is well-programmed also.

Buy from PC Aviator

Consider the price of some other recent quality payware and you will quickly see that this plane is a bargain. And the best part is, the 747 is still in use throughout the world, and there are lots of VAs that use it. So look out VATSIM, I'm coming to get you, only don't expect me to be ready to taxi right after I get my clearance.

Brian Smith
brnsmth@mo-net.com

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Ready for Pushback Author's Web Site