PLEASANTON — James Price had one must-have when looking for a new home — the garage had to be able to hold the nose of a Boeing 737 jetliner.

“Once I realized I could get it in here, I was OK with the house,” Price said.

In his spacious three-car garage Price has a well-traveled jetliner cockpit tucked in next to the family car.

Aviation experts say Price, 52, is one of only a handful of people in the world who have built their own flight simulator cockpit in an actual jet nose.

His dream of building a full-sized jet simulator began nearly 20 years ago when Price joined an online group of flight simulator hobbyists — folks who typically use computer flight simulator programs or build fake cockpits at home.

Price, an air traffic controller and a private pilot who’s never flown a jet but dreams of doing so one day, began buying genuine 737 parts and building mock cockpits.

“My first couple of versions of the cockpit … were just basically made up of wood in my spare room in my house.”

His obsession with making his simulator as authentic as possible — which has cost him about $150,000 so far — led him to buy and refurbish the 737 cockpit.

“My big thing is that I wanted real parts,” he said. “It’s a natural progression to want the shell to put it all in.”

Pursuing his dream

A 2000 divorce led Price to let loose and pursue his dream.

“(That’s) when I decided to buy the actual nose section of the aircraft,” he said. “By then, a buddy of mine from L.A., Matt Ford, knew of a bone yard in Ardmore, Oklahoma. We both flew out there and looked at a bunch of airplanes. He actually owns the sister ship to mine, so we both own a cockpit.”

Ford was inspired to build his own flight simulator when he saw the original wood model Price had assembled.

“I still remember the first time I ever saw it,” Ford, 43, said from his Woodland Hills home. “He was totally the granddad of the entire hobby, and I followed shortly after him.”

Expert Peter Cos says there are only four or five hobbyists worldwide who have gone to this pair’s extreme of using real jet cockpits.

“James and Matt are the pioneers of this whole thing,” said Cos, owner of Flightdeck Solutions. “They are huge, really huge.”

Cos’ company, near Toronto, caters to flight simulator enthusiasts, selling highly sought parts and software. The business he began 11 years ago now has buyers worldwide.

“James is the king,” Cos said. “He and Matt are working on a totally different level. They inspired literally thousands of people worldwide. They created the enthusiasm that turned (my career) from a basement business into a full-blown business.”

Ford spotted the jetliner junkyard while flying in Oklahoma. He first planned to raid an old jet just for a throttle quadrant, a key component for building an authentic simulator. But once there, he found he could buy an entire jet nose.

Ford bought a Boeing 737 nose and hauled it home to Dallas, his home at the time. Price followed suit about a year later.

Price forked over $1,500 to buy the shell of the retired Continental Airline 737 nose section. He hired a semi-truck to move the 2,500-pound nose, first to his hangar at Livermore Municipal Airport, where he keeps his single-engine Piper Arrow.

The cockpit stayed at the hangar while Price tinkered with it, adding the genuine Boeing parts he’d collected since starting his hobby in 1994. It moved to his Pleasanton home in 2009.

Having a full-sized jet nose in the garage was certainly a neighborhood icebreaker.

The first few years the couple lived in the home, “We knew a handful of neighbors,” said Debbie Price, a pilot and an air traffic manager at the Palo Alto Airport. “But the weekend we moved (the jet nose) into the garage, we met the entire neighborhood.”

James Price, who works at the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control center in Fremont, shaved 4 feet off the nose and tore out part of the garage door to get the cockpit to fit.

From the ground up

The jet nose Price found was just the shell of the cockpit. He’s added seats, dual controls, instruments, lights and parts to make it look and function like a modern cockpit. He and Ford have spent endless hours fine-tuning software to give the cockpits the feel of flying a real 737.

Price’s jet nose is surrounded by three full-sized projection screens in the ceiling. The screens pull down to surround plane windows. Three projectors display the flight simulator program on the screens, giving passengers the feel of a real jetliner. The cockpit is stationary but on-screen moving images trick the brain into feeling airborne.

“You can fly to basically any airport in the world,” Price said. “There’s terrain scenery for the entire world. It has a complete weather system in it with real-time weather from the Internet.”

Price can experience what it feels like to fly a jet in all types of situations, including bad weather, engine failure and fires. And, yes, the plane can crash.

“Just now, almost 20 years later, it’s really coming to fruition,” he said. “It’s been a long process. … It’s definitely taken up quite a bit of my life.”

And quite a bit of his bank account.

“Most people are into the desktop (flight) simulators,” he said. “There are only a few of us who go to the crazy level.”

Most enthusiasts stick with computer flight simulator programs or make mock cockpits that look like the real thing, but they don’t go this extra mile, said Cos, the parts vendor from Canada.

“There’s a certain allure of sitting inside the cockpit of a real plane that’s flown 30,000 or 40,000 (trips),” he said. “It smells like a real plane. It’s a very purist approach. James’ approach is at the very high end of the enthusiast business. He’s at the top of the food chain.”

Price now sees his project as a lifelong hobby.

“I don’t think it will ever really be finished,” he said. “I will tinker with it for years to come. There is always some new technology coming along that is too irresistible not to add to my project. … This is pretty fulfilling.

“I can both practice and realize my dream to fly jets. Everybody has to have their crazy hobby.”