Originally Posted by
Nantonaku
You can build a fully functional 777 sim in your basement
Not unless you've got $20 million or so and a lot more expertise than any one individual has.
What Cpt Shah had was an FTD (Flight Training Device), and presumably an uncertified one, at that.
He had access to a certified FTD at work, and to a real simulator. With 20,000 hours, he didn't NEED one at home; he was apparently a computer geek on the side.
I don't need to practice putting a weird flight plan into my FMS; I can do it in less than a minute if I have access to the charts (or even if I don't; the waypoints and airports are all stored in the FMS, anyway).
Checklists, on the other hand, are not secret, nor are they secured.