 IMechE Aerospace North West
The Aerospace North West Division of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers arranged a visit to the Alteon Training facility in Cheadle, Stockport, on Saturday 18 June 2005. This provided attendees with an opportunity to have a go in the A330 flight simulator, as well as a tour of the site and a lecture on flight simulation.
The site tour covered the flight deck trainers, aircraft cabin simulators and main flight simulators. Flight deck trainers are used during the ground school phase of a conversion course for a particular aircraft type, since they are significantly cheaper to run than the fully equipped, all-moving simulators. The flight deck trainer we visited was for an A320 and consisted of an accurate model of the flight deck, instruments, controls and glass cockpit, but it had no simulated external view or motion base. Two Air Deccan pilots, on the ninth day of their twelve-day A320 conversion course, were just about to study fuel system fault procedures while on a simulated flight from Birmingham to Manchester.
The cabin simulators are used to train flight attendants to deal with emergencies. The door trainer cabin section contained a Boeing 767 main door and an overwing exit, where trainees could practice tackling hindrances such as faulty or jammed doors. Next to the door trainer was another fuselage section, which contained a permanently inflated A330 chute, used for evacuation trials. Finally, there was a fuselage mock-up, fitted with a Boeing 757 door on one side, an A320 door on the other side and a typical overwing exit. This mock-up, equipped with galleys, oxygen masks and dummy passengers, could roll on all three axes and generate smoke inside.
Entering the main simulator hall, we arrived at an EMB 145 simulator, built by Flight Safety International (FSI) and owned by British Airways CitiExpress. The other simulators were owned by Alteon: an Airbus A320 simulator, built by Thomson Training & Simulation; a B757/B767 simulator, built by CAE Flight Training (a derivative of Canadian Aviation Electronics Ltd); and finally an A330/A340 simulator.
Our group entered the A330 simulator and, after receiving a briefing and demonstration from the instructor, we each had a turn at taking off and landing. The simulator had been set up to start on Runway 24R at Manchester International Airport, with the exterior view of southern Lancashire showing a dusk sky, broken cloud, stars, and even the twinkling lights of other aircraft traversing the distant evening glow. Takeoff, performed with a rotate speed of 140 kts and a 10° climb out, was fairly straightforward and I was pleased to do an excellent job of it – until I went on to make a shambles of the ILS approach and landing! On leaving the simulator, I just had one question: why did the computerized voice warnings all have an American accent if this was supposed to be a French aeroplane?
A buffet lunch was provided, with a video show about the development and test flying of Concorde, before we proceeded to the lecture. Brian Taylor, Engineering Manager at Alteon, presented this lecture, which came in two parts: firstly, a summary of the Alteon company, and secondly, a longer presentation on A Brief History of Flight Simulation.
FlightSafety International, whose business is with corporate jets of up to 100 seats, engaged in a 50/50 joint venture with Boeing, who deal with commercial aircraft of more than 100 seats, to form FlightSafety Boeing Training International (FSB) in 1997. This was done in response to increased demand for high quality, reliable, standardized airline training, delivered closer to the customer. Boeing later bought out FSI’s share and reintroduced the company as Alteon, a wholly owned Boeing subsidiary, in 2002. Alteon now has 76 full flight simulators in nearly 20 locations worldwide, including European sites at Manchester, Luton, Gatwick, Palma and Casablanca. Providing courses for 27 aircraft models to over 400 operators, the company trains nearly 30,000 students per year. Custom is increasing from blossoming low cost operators in India, particularly Air Deccan from Bangalore, as well as worldwide from familiar airlines such as British Airways and diverse clients like Royal Air Maroc, Aerolineas Argentinas, Ethiopian Airlines, Kenya Airways and Atlasjet.
Fight simulation began in the days when only gliding flight was possible: a pilot would sit in a glider, facing into a strong wind, get a feel for the controls, practise keeping the wings level, and then be launched off a cliff. With powered flight came a graded system of exercises on real aircraft, beginning with experience in low-powered aircraft that could not take off, moving on to more powerful models and eventually taking off and flying. Blériot’s Penguin System consisted of an aeroplane with wings too small to fly, in which a pilot would just taxi around the airfield to feel the effects of the ailerons and rudder. Many training aircraft were tethered to balloons, overhead gantries or railway bogies, and the Sanders Trainer was simply bolted to the ground.
The need for practising ‘blind’ flying brought advances in non-moving simulators during the 1920s and 1930s, beginning just with the addition of a moving compass, and progressing to more detailed instruments and coupled controls. In 1930, Ed Link introduced the first moving simulator, which could rotate through 360° and had a moving compass, mechanically or pneumatically operated instruments and a lid for blind flying. By the late 1930s, the US Army Air Corps had taken a real interest in moving simulators, and they were followed by American Airlines and then the RAF. By this time, moving simulators not only had moving controls and instruments but could also be fed radio tones from an operator and could be linked to a course plotter for route flying training.
The number of pilots mushroomed during World War II, aircraft systems and performance advanced rapidly, and training was also required for performing transatlantic ferry flights of American aircraft. Consequently, major improvements came with the arrival of analogue computers, and soon it was possible to imitate aircraft aerodynamics and use cams to simulate linear functions. However, the real saviour was the advent of the digital computer, near the start of the 1960s, and therewith it became possible to provide more complete data and use simulators for flight development programmes.
The Redifon-built, BOAC-owned Comet 4 simulator of 1958 had a pitch motion system, and with the introduction of widebodies such as the Boeing 747 and the requirement for lateral acceleration cues, four and six-degree of freedom motion systems soon followed. Visual representation systems progressed from a camera moving on a gantry over a scale model of a landscape and sending scenery images to a monitor, onwards to projector and mirror systems, and then on to digitally generated pictures. [What sort of simulated horror-in-the-sky scenario would the pilots have seen if they were using the model/camera scenery system and a spider were to crawl across the camera?]
Today’s simulators comprise real-time digital computers, six degree of freedom motion, digital day/dusk/night visual systems and high-fidelity modelling of aircraft data, so that pilots can move from simulator conversion training to flying the real aeroplane with only two check rides. The next steps will be to move away from hydraulic motion systems towards electrically driven jacks, as simulators become lighter with the use of composite materials and smaller electronic circuitry.
Aerospace North West and Alteon Training made a sparkling effort in arranging and conducting the day’s flight simulator activities and lecture, and I thank everyone who made it such an enjoyable visit.
Craig F. Eckersley, RAeS Preston Branch.
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