Originally Posted by
gums
Salute!
Well, re: simulators and flight tests
We just had the inadvertant MCAS "test" it was called JT610
Unless the sims have actual hardwired or mux bus connections/interfaces between black boxes and simulated sensors, they are not very useful for MCAS training when malfunctions happen
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I would not trust sim if it "emulated" all the boxes, signals and interfaces in on big computer program. Sure, you could have many components in the configuration that were not actual AoA vanes or pitot tubes or free air temp sensors and so forth. The biggie is how all the components work together physically and electronically exactly as in the criterion system. For example, in the new military systems, the actual fire control computer and multiplex bus are not simulated, they are the real thing! The subsystems hanging on the bus or buses might be a "simulation" of the real deal, and can even be dumb boxes or "rheostats/volume controls/tuning knobs". The main thing is to use the actual interfaces/connections in the architecture. If the subsystem has software to process a signal from a sensor, then it should have the identical code as the real deal.
Jez saying, having flown cosmic sims since 1971.
Gums sends...
The current breed of simulators for the latest Boeing aircraft (including the MAX) use a binary executable supplied by Boeing, which includes any and all aircraft code for avionics, flight control computers, etc, and engineering models of many of the critical system in a manner that is intended to ensure the simulators produced replicate the aircraft as closely as possible... however malfunctions for sensors or other system components must be 'planned' as part of this binary.
In this case the question is whether the MCAS system is modeled in the simulation binary, and is there a way to replicate the failure of a single AOA sensor in the software load?
I suspect only the owners of the simulators I listed previously and Boeing themselves could answer that.
- GY