What happens to old aircraft simulators?

[SevenFiftySeven]

Hi Guys,
A few months ago I nad the pleasure of visiting an organisation that had bought an old B737/200 simulator and was basically selling slots on it for non airline personnel whom were sufficiently interested in 'having a go' at landing a Boeing.
As a PPL who has flown nothing larger than a Piper twin, I have to say it was a very fascinating day, giving an insight into what it is like for those of you who are lucky enough to fly jets for a living.

My question is though - just how would someone go about buying a real simulator?
Is there a 'simulator trading weekly' magazine somewhere??!!

(No - I'm not in the market for one - this is purely out of my own interest)

Also, what happens to all those old simulators like the B707/737-200/742 that don't get bought up as well as military simulators??

[farrari]

Good ? , I would like to know also.

[Hudson]

Air New Zealand operates a B737-200 Full Flight simulator at Auckland. It is working almost 20 hours a day, used by their own crews and by several Asian operators. Real money spinner and an excellent simulator.
I heard that it is being sold in May/June and maybe going to UK. It is being replaced by a B737-300 sim.

[SFly]

No idea, but I do know that new they can go up to about $17 million!!!!

[Flying Fox]

All you could want and more, available at:

http://www.barnstormers2000.com/

:)

FF.

[737]

Hudson,

The Air New Zealand sim has been bought by Ryanair and should be moving to either Prestwick or East Midlands later in the year.

73

[747FOCAL]

The 777 sims go for about 24 million.
Roughly what it costs to build the front section of the plane from the cockpit door forward.

[Flight Safety]

SFS, good question. I used to work on simulators 20 years ago, back when computer generated imagery on flight sims was fairly new. I remember being sent to Evans and Sutherland in Salt Lake City for training once and seeing the prototype for the then new CT5 imaging system (boy that really dates me :) ).

I would imagine that maintenance could be a problem on older sims. Recently produced sims for older aircraft types wouldn't be problem, but sims produced with older computer technology could be increasingly difficult and costly to maintain. I can't imagine what it would be like to try and maintain a sim produced 20 years ago.

For airline pilot use, updating sims with newer computers and imaging systems can be cost justified. For example my first job after training, was updating a South African 747-100 sim that had a "moving camera over a model" technology that we replaced with a computer imaging system. We updated the sims main flight computer also. But for commercial ventures like selling time to the general public on an older sim, maintenance might be a problem. It's a great idea though.

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Safe flying to you...

[ft]

Yes, they're definitely high maintenance. We have an old instruments only non-moving DC-10 sim in the hangars my uni is using and the guys working on that one have been struggling for the last few years to get it running. Last I heard they only had it up minutes at a time. It's running on old VAX mainframes and just to keep those running... There's always a hard-to-find piece of wiring or PCB fried somewhere from what I hear.

Flight Safety, since you seem to be in the business. Wouldn't finding replacement instruments without paying the full price be a problem too?

Cheers,
/Fred

[PPRuNe Dispatcher]

The full-motion Trident-3 sim near Biggin Hill is 30 years old this year. It's still running!

The mainframe is a Honeywell which was upgraded to RAM from CORE in the late 1970s, another box is a TI minicomputer, there is an Evans & Sutherland graphics generator, and a couple of BBC micros which are used to load the airfields & generate flight path displays for the instructor.

It's a real piece of both aviation and computing history, and also an extremely useful piece of equipment for both the Wannabe & ATPL wanting "refreshment". And best of all it's just 50 UKP per hour to hire.

---PPD

[RATBOY]

There are some old military simulators around. Smithsonian Air and Space Museum has at least 1 F100 or F101 cockpit procedures trainer and a Grumman F9F Panther simulator. The old trainers like the Panther owned by the U.S. Navy were almost all trailer mounted so they could be moved. I had the dubious pleasure of moving the A3D Weapon System Trainer (Navy device 2F21,I think) from NAS Alameda CA to NAS Norfolk VA in the early 1980s. It was sixties technology with one trailer for the cockpit and another for the computer and instructor's station. The computer was an analog machine running with vacum tubes. I figured it wouldn't make it and we would need to be at Norfolk with a broom and dustpan to clean up broken glass. But it made it cross country just fine and after finding enough electricity to run it it turned on just fine. Big problem was finding parts and also the amount and special skilled labor it took to keep everything in adjustment.

Believe many airlines sell the trainers when they no longer have use for them, so things tend to move "down" the food chain just like aircraft tend to do. Got to look at U.S. Air's training center at PIT a number of years ago. They were just getting out of the BAC 111 business but had a whole FAA certified training setup with sims and all and training the people they were selling the aircraft to, as well as anyone else that needed a real FAA type rating course. AT the time they expected they would in the business of training years after they sold the aircraft. At some point they become uneconomical or not useful and probably go for "10 cents a pound" as scrap.

A fairly modern simulator without a motion system (which makes the housing and care and feeding a lot more complicated), especially simulating a glass cockpit, should be relatively straightforward to maintain and operate, though the big problem is still analog/digital digital/analog converters. As far a obtaining and maintaining certification standards I doubt it would be feasible for private individuals, but it would make a great toy for the Flight Simulator crowd.

For Flight Safety: The pitot/static driven instruments in sims are indeed modified (or actually just cosmetic copies with no actual airplane parts at all) and use a DC servomotor interfaced through a D to A converter for the computer to drive. That is the easy part, the hard one is what algorithm s you use to simulate the real aircraft.

FUN QUIZ QUESTION: You are simulating a Beachcraft King Air 90. You must simulate loss of one engine's oil pressure. Question: (1)What instruments/lights/etc do you need to connect to and (2) what logic do you use. ANSWER NEXT WEEK.



[This message has been edited by RATBOY (edited 07 February 2001).]

[Flight Safety]

FT, I've been out of the sim business for a long time now. I want to correct one thing I said earlier, "we" did not do the mainframe upgrade on the South African sim, another group did that upgrade while "we" were installing the Evans and Sutherland system. The memory fades a little after 20 years.

The flight instruments in the sim are normally the same as the ones used in the aircraft. If the instruments are still available for the aircraft, they should be available for the sim. The price for an overhauled instrument should be about the same as one for the aircraft.

One thing I never understood during my time working on sims (my time was mostly in the visuals area), was how the simulator manipulated the air pressure dependent flight instruments. Were there sim mounted air pressure systems (used on those instruments) that were controlled by the mainframe, or were those particular instruments modified to be driven by electrical signals? I seem to remember that those particular instruments were electrically modified, but I could be wrong.


[This message has been edited by Flight Safety (edited 06 February 2001).]

[411A]

Recall one of the old PanAmerican B707 simulators in SFO in the early 70's. The visual system was 35mm film and I was in the middle of a no-flap approach when the film broke and spooled all over the floor like a big black snake. As this was a type ride for me, the FAA was NOT ammused. So, we did it in the aircraft later that week, right before the circling approach with an engine shutdown (actual) due to a fire warning.

[ft]

Flight Safety,

I actually asked this question about the interface between simulator control and air data system at a lecture held by a sim engineer recently. IIRC they indeed do not use pressurised air to simulate atmospheric conditions but rather install modified altimeters etc which are controlled by servo motors. Both our memories agree so we're probably right. :)

I found it interesting that many simulators seem to be registered as actual aircraft, mainly to simplify the paperwork regarding the instrumentation and avionics. That way, they can take an instrument right out of the simulator and put it in an actual aircraft, should the need arise.

Cheers,
/Fred

[TowerDog]

What happens to old sims?
Well, like stated above, some move down the food-chain, others are being donated to flight schools for a juicy tax write off.

I flew an old Pan-Am sim last year that was built in 1971, with over 100,000 hours.
It did not fly good and was a challenge to land when transitioning from non-precision approach to visual. (600 feet, then line up with rwy: Too sensitive in roll and the visual part did not keep up. Had to go back to the gauges to get things straight again. Wow.)

I belive the old TWA 747-100 in JFK was offered for sale for about $1 mill a year or two ago. Don't know who bought it, but it was
a good machine and flew better than the old Pan-Am box.


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Men, this is no drill...

[Flight Safety]

FT, 20 years ago the main method of achieving simulator "fidelity" was to run a series of flight tests on an actual aircraft (one selected from the fleet) that involved taking a series of measurements on a number of parameters. They included things like various engine parameters including fuel consumption (each engine was modeled separately), airframe acceleration at various weights, climb rates, roll rates, pitch rates, stick forces at various altitudes and air speeds, trim responses (at various airspeeds and CGs) and a variety of other parameters.

Then the software designers would "model" the simulated aircraft's flight characteristics after the "tail number" of the aircraft that was measured in actual flight. I remember once doing a sim install in Germany for an E-3A AWACS where a Canadian Air Force test pilot was on loan to NATO to do the flight testing of the sim. It was his job to make sure the performance parameters of the sim matched the measured flight parameters of the actual aircraft. I remember having several interesting discussions with him about this, which is why I remember this particular incident the best, even thought flight fidelity was not my area. There was a long series of sign off checks in the sim's contract that he had to approve in the flight parameters area, and it took a good number of days to perform all of the measurements on that sim.

I think that's why sims have an "assigned" tail number for the actual aircraft they were modeled after. I assume that today, 20 years later, this is still the basic process.

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Safe flying to you...

[This message has been edited by Flight Safety (edited 08 February 2001).]

[ft]

Flight Safety,
yes, but that's not what I was talking about. I'm quite positive they were indeed registered as a/c individuals. Perhaps the regs vary a bit on that point. I can certainly see how it would be easier showing the authorities papers saying that a certain instrument has been in <registration # so-and-so> rather than in "simulator use" though.

The precision used to sign off FFS these days amaze me. I recall one example I was given. During a visit in the a corner of the envelope, they had found slight buffeting in a certain a/c that was not previously known. Testflights were conducted and sims upgraded, probably costing quite a bit, although it's not very likely the sims will ever be taken there. Wow. And then the real-time demands on the computers...

Any more interesting sidenotes from your time in the simulator business? They are much appreciated, simulators are a special interest of mine. Perhaps in another thread and/or forum?

Cheers,
/ft

[RATBOY]

Flight Safety's experience is consistent with mine. The way U.S. Navy contracts were written with the manufacturers was that the simulator would fly like a specific tail number aircraft. This aircraft was generally the flying qualities test aircraft that had had tons of data collected on it's flying qualities and the simulator was expected to fly like the data. This data to build sims is rather different than the traditional flying qualities data in many ways and was contentious in many cases.

I would seriously question the notion that in the civil world the simulator would have a tail number like an aircraft, if for no other reason than tail numbers, like number/license plates,are assigned to aircraft, not parts.

Parts used in simulators that are unmodified real aircraft parts would have to be maintained like real aircraft parts and carry the same documentation. In practice I do not believe this works out very well in that in the first place many of the "actual aircraft" parts used in simulators didn't pass muster to go in aircraft anyway and in the second if they are not maintained all along and have ADs incorporated etc. (which costs more) there is a "gap" in the pedegree of the part which makes it a suspected unapproved part and when the weight of the paper equals the weight of the end item you may, if you get enough signatures, be able to use the part. But don't bet on it.