Today I headed over to the flight line to suit up and get my picture taken with some seriously cool aircraft. The twin-engine aircraft is the North American OV-10A "Bronco" and the single-engine (and quite beautiful) airplane is a Cirrus. It was particularly cool for me to see the Cirrus because they're manufactured in my hometown of Duluth, MN!

Today it was off to the flight simulation facility, located right next to my hangar. The facility sports three seperate flight simulators (two with panoramic, lensed screens and one with the standard projection screen).

Each unit is flyable stand-alone as pictured, but if motion simulation is desired, they may be hoisted via crane and placed on top of a specialized platform.

Inside each simulator is an authentic replica cockpit (or actual, second-hand cockpit) with all controls and gauges displayed via a glass cockpit interface. Each simulator is driven by a SGI computer in the rear of the cockpit. The mainfame is responsible for the physics model of both the environment and the particular aircraft being flown. Moreover, each display is driven by an independent Linux computer.

While I didn't get to fly a simulation on the motion platform, it was surprising how real the presentation was. As I wasn't expecting the "real" factor, I got a little motion sick at first. However, I was able to quickly overcome to bring the aircraft to a safe landing.