Written By Edie Muldrew
Since the Municipal Airport closed, the Alberta Aviation Museum hasn’t necessarily been known for having aircraft that can fly, with one notable exception: our flight simulators! We have two flight simulators in tubs on our museum floor, but we’re also lucky to have eight Red Bird simulators in our simulator lab, allowing us to provide an exciting and dynamic flight experience from the ground. We use these simulators a lot: school programs, events, kids’ camps, and our Simulator Saturday offering means these machines have earned their flight hours. Unfortunately, this led to some of our sims falling into disrepair, and then most of them. Most of these issues centered around the yoke – part of the steering hardware of an airplane. With the sims costing thousands of dollars each to replace, we were desperate for a solution. Luckily, one of our volunteers, Mike Reimer, came up with an ingenious and cost-effective fix.
The feedback and movement parts around the yoke for rolling (the up and down movement of the wings of a plane) are springs in the simulator, and the pitch (the up and down movement of the nose of a plane) feedback is a rolling track inside the computer. The issues we were running into were mainly to do with the springs wearing through their bumpers and breaking, and with the yoke racking or twisting on its track, causing the pitch of the simulator to be inconsistent and to sometimes stop working entirely. Mike explains: “The new roll spring/anti-racking bracket is made from a single piece of rectangular aluminum sheet metal.” Not only does this prevent the simulator springs and track from breaking, it also “does a great job of centering the yoke in a roll while smoothly transitioning from one spring to the other so that the feel of the system is more like an aircraft than a computer joystick.” Mike was looking for something that would be affordable, with easy-to-source materials, that would fit inside the current simulator boxes and be easy to install. The anti-racking brackets succeeded at all of the goals except for the easy install, Mike admits, but he got the last few installations down to an hour per simulator.
Mike went through a design process, creating four prototypes of the design. The first was too weak and complex. The second added strength and prevented slides from racking, but didn’t necessarily prevent the bending and damage of the springs. The third was better, but the fourth was the best – it had great spring tension, it was simplified to make cutting the metal easier and solved the problems we were having!
Then, he just had to put them in. He sent in a lengthy list of steps with the tools used, but essentially he had to remove the monitors and lids, unhook the pitch belt and springs, unhook a variety of zip ties and screws, slide out the yoke, remove a bracket and a slider tray, and then reassemble everything with the bracket in place. Delicate work, so it’s impressive he succeeded in bringing the installation time down to an hour.
We’re grateful to Mike for his expertise and all of the time he put into this solution. We look forward to using our sims for many more years to come. Volunteers and their hard work keep us flying here at the Alberta Aviation Museum!