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I'm trying to build a home cockpit for the PMDG 737-800. I'm looking for some landing gear position indicator lights but I don't know where to get them from. I've tried ebay and amazon, but it returned no promising results. The other alternative is of course to make them. Does anyone know where I could have something like this made?

kevin
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mr-matt
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3 Answers3

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Airliner parts have a tiny market outside of the airline and maintenance businesses (in the sense thst the general public generates no demand) which means that there probably aren't many places to shop for unairworthy (read: cheap) spares. I would place "want to buy" ads on Barnstormers and maybe cruise the site from time to time clicking through relevent categories. I did see one ad offering 737-200 parts but you'll have to contact the seller to see exactly what they have and how much they want.

You could certainly buy a new part but you will not like the price tag. I imagine that an unairworthy spare for an -800 series will be hard to find compared to a -200, for example, because of the quantity of inoperative junk parts generated thus far by the respective fleets.

Good luck!

acpilot
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  • Thank you for that. I have now decided to make my own with a bit of 3D printing and laser cutting! Price tag will be sooo much cheaper! – mr-matt Jul 30 '16 at 18:27
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There is a very large market for used airplane parts but you need to understand the types of parts you can buy. There are effectively 3 types of used airplane parts,

  • Red Tag: component is scrap or unusable
  • Yellow Tag: component is serviceable and airworthy
  • Green Tag: component is not airworthy but is repairable

when you are looking at aircraft parts most of what you will see is green and yellow tags as they are generally what is worth selling as they still have life. These parts are pricey as they still carry air worthy value. Most used aircraft parts come from air frames being parted out which often occurs at a bone yard. These same facilities also scrap some parts (red tag them). Since red tag parts carry little aviation value they can sometimes be had for cheap. You should contact the various large dismantlers with a list of what you are looking for and inform them that you would like red tag parts for a home simulator.

If you are just looking for instrumentation (which is in some regards generic to all aircraft) it may be worth a trip to your local airfield/maintenance facility to ask what they have lying around.

I would reach out to this guy and ask him where he got his stuff (I know some came from a bone yard).

I would read this, but take note of the fact that there is an active effort to physically destroy red tag parts so they don't make it back into circulation (unfortunately this has happened in the past due to fraud). This limits the public sale of these kinds of parts but there is not necessarily any law that I know of requiring the parts to be destroyed so you may just need to contact the right people at the right time.

Dave
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  • Looking through the pages found on a search like this one, it looks like some old parts are out there as art pieces; perhaps one of these outfits could be helpful in locating either a part or a source for parts like those desired. – Ralph J Feb 02 '18 at 06:01
  • I find it interesting that Yellow tag items are serviceable and airworthy, while Green tag items need repair. Based on our conditioned response to traffic lights, I'd have thought the Green items were ready to go into an aircraft while the Yellow ones would require repair. (Yeah, of all the important things to jump out at me...) – FreeMan Sep 14 '18 at 12:34
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Try cockpitsimparts.co.uk. I built my whole 737-800 from this site. Sells most things you will need at a very good price! Depends where you are I suppose. They are based in Cardiff UK. Everything is made from plastic but looks pretty real! enter image description here

Pilot stu
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