The
Saxon Microlights Flight Simulator
The British weather! Don’t you just love it?
Even though we operate in an area with some of the UK’s best flying weather, we are still restricted by the wet weather in the Autumn and the short, dreary days in the Winter. Some student pilots solve this by taking a holiday to the warmer Mediterranean countries to continue their practice, but it is expensive and most people can only manage a week or two at the most. At Saxon Microlights we have been spending the wet days and the dark nights on a solution to this problem – our microlight flight simulator.
This simulator is officially a ‘synthetic training device’ and is being designed to meet the BMAA’s stringent requirements for such things. When complete, it will allow the student pilot to sit in a full-size microlight cockpit with all controls functional and a good view out into the simulated world beyond the cockpit. Not only does it permit practice ‘flights’ at night or when the weather is bad, but it does also allow the student pilot to practice at a much lower cost than when flying the real aeroplane.
What is our simulator?
It started life as a prototype in Ginge’s back bedroom but we’ve since moved it to a room of its own at our club hut at the farm. It comprises a single seat cockpit with simulated controls of the correct size and position to match our Thruster training aircraft. In July 2007 we fitted our prototype control system using engineered springs and levers to produce realistic control forces at the joystick. A very powerful PC is used to run X-Plane simulation software which Joan has configured to perform very much like the school’s aircraft. Movement of the pilot’s controls are fed electronically to the simulator’s computer which calculates the resulting movement of the simulated aircraft and scenery. A large video screen shows an image representing the outside world and the aircraft instruments. Since early May 2009, we have the added benefit of a tactile transducer fitted to the pilot’s seat. This is driven with carefully designed waveforms by the simulation computer to provide motion sensations, especially those associated with ground contact at take-off and landing.
What can we do with the simulator?
1) Have fun!
2) Demonstrate parts of the flying syllabus which need very specific weather conditions (eg. strong crosswinds, or flying in poor visibility and low cloud)
3) Practice exercises which a student is struggling with, without the need for a full flight (eg judging landing height or performing steep turns)
4) Practice take-offs and landings without the need to fly lots of circuits which can disturb the neighbours
5) Practice cross country navigation on days when the real-world weather is not suitable for doing it for real (and at less cost).
... and lots more.
What does this simulator look like?
At the moment it still looks like a chair on a box in front of a large-screen TV, but that will change. We’ll continue put more up-to-date pictures up as the project develops.
The secret is
that the controls are in the right position to feel the same as in the real
aircraft and the screen is placed so that the pilot gets an accurate
perspective view. A sound system run through the aircraft-quality headsets and
the base of the seat ensures the pilot can hear and respond to changes in
engine sound, airflow noise and even the sound and feel of contact with the runway on landing.
On the screen, the instruments are scaled to appear a similar size and at a similar position to the real aircraft which makes it easy for the pilot to swap between the simulator and the real flying. For readers not familiar with the Thruster, the light lines in the picture below are the engine support tubes and the blob at the top represents the engine. When sat in the simulator’s seat, the perspective view gives a strong sensation of being ‘in the scenery’. The sensation of flying is real enough that a real-world pilot found himself scanning the distance for ‘other traffic’ that he might need to avoid!
For some short video clips click on these links.
- A demonstration stall used as part
of our pre-lesson briefing for this exercise. (2MB wmv download)
- A bit of simulator flying as seen by the pilot
- An antisocial flying display – we’d never try this for real!
For some more photos click on these links:
- Stalls and steep turns
- Approaching North Weald (high resolution image – 386kB)
- Following
the A12 overhead Marks Tey (high resolution image – 403kB
[Click here] for a map of the area shown in the photograph linked above.
Many years ago, Joan worked as a test engineer and programmer* for a company that made flight simulators for the airlines. That was so long ago that one of them is now being restored for a museum! [Click here] to see details of that one.
[* a
real one using assembler and machine code – none of your wimpish high level
languages for us!]
... and finally, a link to a
history of flight simulation so you can see where we fit in the greater
scheme of things.