"Michael" wrote in message
om...

Well, that sounds like a good simulation. But I seem to recall that
your FAA-certified FTD is a device with motion, right? In fact,
doesn't it have enough motion to be considered a simulator rather than
a procedures trainer?

Yes, it has 6-axis motion, and that does indeed help a good bit with the
realism of the simulation.

However, officially it is still "just" an FTD -- temporarily Level 1 and
then ultimately Level 3 after the FAA inspects/approves it.

So actually from the FAA's standpoint as of today my full-motion "simulator"
is officially categorized the same as an old tabletop Frasca FTD with
instruments only and no visual display.

In order to qualify an an official "simulator" rather than a "flight
training device" a lot more would need to be done to replicate the specific
performance of one airplane -- an exact cockpit replica, verified flight
modeling at the extremes of flight, dynamic control loading matching the
specific airplane's control pressures, realistic simulation of flight in
icing and near thunderstorms, and a bunch more. This would require
hydraulic rather than electric actuators on the motion base as well as quite
a bit of hardware/software design such that there probably is no
economically realistic way to achieve even a Level A Simulator for piston
aircraft -- even the low end of quotes I got "for fun" were way way out
there, as in 10 to 15 times the cost of a Cessna P210.

Even then, I am not sure it would make sense to have a piston simulator so
specific to one airplane type -- a lot more practical is to have both
turbocharged and non-turbocharged flight models for both single- and
multi-engine piston airplanes, as my FTD can do. I think from the
standpoint of using a flight training device for piston airplanes, mostly
what students are aiming for is to learn emergency procedures, practice
partial panel in a realistic situation, and perhaps learn how to operate an
IFR GPS -- there probably is no huge advantage to having an aerodynamically
precise flight model to achieve this as long as the power settings and
control response are close enough to let the student sit down and
successfully fly an approach on the first try.


--
Richard Kaplan, CFII

www.flyimc.com