Gamers Notebooks

 By Nicole Farrington

In Part I of our article we saw how important training became with the inception of manned flights. Efforts to make these training sessions realistic improved with every attempt.  The first known flight simulation device was to help pilots fly the  Antoinette monoplane. A training rig was developed in 1909 to help the pilot operate the control wheels before the aircraft was flown. This consisted of a seat mounted in a half-barrel and the two wheels.  The pilot training devices developed during World War I. Some, like the earlier Antoinette trainer of 1909, were for teaching pilots how to operate the flight controls.

The next step in the evolution of the flight trainer was the replacement of the human operator in Antoinette type machines with mechanical or electrical actuators linked to the trainer controls. The aim of these now automatic devices was to rotate the trainee pilot’s fuselage into an attitude corresponding to that of the real aircraft in response to his control inputs. 

The 1920s and 1930s

 

An electrical version of this type of trainer was patented in the United States in 1929 by Buckley. This machine consisted of a small dummy fuselage mounted on a universal joint (which by now had become a common arrangement) with pitch and roll attitudes each produced by opposing motors proportionally controlled by stick movements while turning motion was provided by another motor actuated by controls on the rudder bar. Programmed disturbances could be introduced by means of a perforated tape arrangement which could also control the indications of dummy cockpit instruments; these were not, however, connected to the flying controls.

 Flight Simulators

LINK TRAINER

The best-known early flight simulation device was the Link Trainer, produced by Edwin Link in Binghamton, New York state, USA, which he started building in 1927, later patenting his design which was first available for sale in 1929. The Link family firm in Binghamton manufactured keyboard organs, and Edwin Link was therefore familiar with components such as leather bellows, reed switches and so forth. He was also an amateur pilot, but was not satisfied with the amount of real flying training that was available. He decided to build a ground-based device to provide such training without the restrictions of weather and the availability of aircraft and flight instructors. His design had a pneumatic motion platform driven by inflatable bellows which provided pitch and roll cues. An electric motor rotated the platform, providing yaw cues. A generic replica cockpit with working instruments was mounted on the motion platform. When the cockpit was covered over, pilots could practice flight by instruments in a safe environment. The motion platform gave the pilot cues of real angular motion in pitch (nose up and down), roll (wing up or down) and yaw (nose left and right).

Initially, aviation flight schools showed little interest in the “Link Trainer”. Link also demonstrated his trainer to the US Army Air Force (USAAF), but with no result. However, the situation changed in 1934 when the Army Air Force was given a Government contract to fly the postal mail. This included having to fly in bad weather as well as good, for which the USAAF had not previously carried out much training. Sadly, during the first weeks of the mail service, nearly a dozen Army pilots were killed, and something had to be done. The Army Air Force hierarchy remembered Ed Link and his trainer. Link flew in to meet them at Newark Field, New Jersey, and they were impressed in his ability to arrive on a day with poor visibility, due to practice on his training device. The result was that the USAAF purchased four Link Trainers at US$3500 each, and this can be said to mark the start of the world flight simulation industry.

The company Link Aviation Devices Inc was then formed, and sales followed to others including the UK Royal Air Force and, ironically in view of the Pearl Harbour attack on 7 December 1941, to the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Arm.

The first description of the trainer made no reference to instruments and the device was therefore primarily intended to demonstrate to students the effects of the controls on the attitude of the simulated aeroplane and to train them in their operation. As with other synthetic devices of this time, the simulated effects of the ailerons, elevators and rudder were independent; they did not represent a true reproduction of the aircraft’s coordinated behaviour.

However, despite twenty years of development, simulation was not seen as a substitute for actual flight. The acceptance of simulated flight as a useful training aid had to wait for further developments in the science of flying.

World War II (1939-45)

The principal pilot trainer used during World War II was the Link Trainer. Some 10,000 were produced to train new pilots of allied nations, many in the USA and Canada because many pilots were trained in those countries before returning to Europe or the Pacific to fly combat missions.

During WWII, other ground-based flight training devices were produced. For instance, in 1943, a fixed-base aircraft-specific trainer for the British Halifax bomber was produced at the RAF Station at Silloth in the north of England. This consisted of a mock-up of the front fuselage of the Halifax, the pilot’s flight controls being simulated through an analogue system that gave artificial resistance (“feel”) when the pilot moved the controls. Another name for this device was the “Silloth Trainer”.

A different type of WWII trainer was for navigating at night by the stars. The Celestial Navigation Trainer of 1941 was 13.7 m (45 ft) high and capable of accommodating the navigation team of a bomber crew. It enabled sextants to be used for taking “star shots” from a projected display of the night sky.

 

Gamers Notebooks