A 1937 DC-3 restored and in the air with its large radial engines and steel fuselage shining… Sharing this link…
A wonderful restoration effort.
A bit of trivia… the first built DC-3s carried Wright Cyclone R-1820 radial engines. From what I have read, each of those weighed a 1000 pounds each and consumed a 110 gallons per hour!
Sharing a short video clip about the Evans VP-1 that i came across while reading the EAA newsletter. Another inspiring story of aviation passion. Just as the concept of lift – the ‘wind beneath the wing’ – never ceases to amaze us, I am forever inspired by inventors who start from the drawing board and sketch out home-built airplanes. The Volksplane is exactly that…
Innovating new concepts and creating new products has been a common and consistent theme in the industry. It is interesting to note that when such innovation occurs in an new industry, many of the corresponding methods, mechanisms, equipment do not exist. For example, when Boeing struck an agreement with the chief of PanAm back in the 60s to build a bigger jet than was available at the time, apart from the design of a new aircraft, they had to evolve, build and validate all other components that led to the delivery of the 747. They pretty much put the company on the line in doing so bringing them close to bankruptcy at one point.
There are several such examples in the history of aviation. Indeed, such innovation has been cyclical and the industry has gone through many such cycles of peaks of intense innovation and then periods when they have basically struggled to stay afloat. This discussion is important because the evolution of the simulator is one such innovation. The simulator was an outcome of need – the need to train people on what was built. With time, it turned into a tool – a tool to help address the need to test what was built. In both cases, minimize risk, then minimize cost and then provide a platform to scale operations.
Among the various examples we have seen/read about, I find FAA’s NextGen use of simulators to be a comprehensive example. I find it comprehensive because of various, multi-faceted elements that NextGen reaches into. there are changes to aircraft, airports, traffic control, navigation, communications, crew roles, training processes and a whole lot more. There have been many who have questioned if such a wide impact program is even safe to implement as one program. FAA’s thinking has been that there comes an inflection point when multi-path changes are required to be performed in tandem rather than piecemeal.
Come to think of it, simulators have changed character over the past century. They have gone from helping test/train the machine they model TO helping with modeling (designing) the machine itself.
In the case of NextGen, the future machine is a redesigned USNAS.
Designing simulators that help design the future airspace system is a complex endeavor – fraught with risk. Often, its harder to design the simulator than it is to implement the model in the real world. More importantly, validating such simulators to ensure that they are accurate enough to model the real thing is a complicated exercise. Simulator-related research over the past 5 decades is a mix of successes on one side; and criticisms and warnings on the other side. There are many studies providing us data that simulator design is an evolving science – and that an over-reliance on simulators can lead to problems. In the light of persisting concerns, the use of simulators to design an overhaul of the USNAS can actually be questioned.
Are these simulators able to adequately model and predict behavior in the real world. Are we leaving something out of the model that is in fact a part of the real world environment? Is the simulator violating one of the core principle of learning design, i.e. modeling of identical elements?…
While being a passionate advocate of simulators, I find some of these persisting concerns problematic and in need of expeditious study.
CP
Another picture to “why we fly” collection…
Thanks to a fellow aviator at my home airport for sharing this picture. He has done an immaculate job of taking care and restoring a 70 year old airplane and has flown it all over the US.
https://flic.kr/p/21AeYbY
There is little doubt that simulators have redefined the realm of initial and recurrent training in both Military and Commercial aviation. Cost benefits have been a primary consideration. Lowering the risk of training has been the other major benefit. Achieving balance between simulator and real-aircraft training time has been a subject of much debate and research. Leaning too much to either format has impact. On one side, cost impacts could be significant. On the other, the trainee has little feel for what it is like to be performing this tasks in a real aircraft.
There is also truth to the fact that some areas of training are better handled in a sim while others absolutely need an aircraft.
In my opinion, simulators have evolved to a point where they are close to ‘as real as it gets’. Transfer of training has proven to be effective. Aircrafts have become more technically advanced and a lot of training is focused on procedure and automation – an area where sims lend themselves to really well.
Replication of real-world weather, comms, terrain, flight dynamics have become possible. There isn’t a lot of loss in ambient factors in a simulator today.
In fact the term ‘supplement’ almost implies that sims are secondary. That has changed with time. In many areas, simulators end up being primary channels for training while aircraft-based training come in at an equal percentage or less.
Again, the one major risk of doing too much time in a sim is that it may lead to a situation where the trainee has little or no feel for what the real world circumstances will be like. This too, then comes down to how well real world factors are modeled into a simulation ecosystem – aka fidelity.
Here is a nice compilation from CNN today….
http://www.cnn.com/travel/article/prototype-planes/index.html
Automation has eased workload on the flightdeck but, in turn, has also become a source of increased cognitive load on pilots (Salas & Maurino, 2010). Coherence has emerged as a necessary competency for modern day pilots. In order to mitigate surprises, pilots need to carry mental models of underlying systems and plausible use scenarios (Sherry et al., 2001). Coherence techniques can be enabled (or impeded) by a top-down human influence known as ‘Attention’ (Gibb, Gray & Scharff, 2010). Collectively, these expectations are onerous and it is important to ask whether the human mind can truly live up to them. This question is even more important given the levels of automation complexity in modern day aircraft.
One of the highlights of this week’s readings was the aspect of ‘coherence’ (Salas & Maurino, 2010). For coherence to be effective, pilots need to have a deep understanding of the underlying logic, systems and automation impacts. The cognitive load has grown significantly over the years and continues to grow even faster today. While it is possible to acquire and display a lot more data in the form of meaningful information on extra-rich customizable displays, an important consideration would be to understand at what point this reaches practical human limits.
In the end, there is no limit on information that can be provided or should be assimilated by the crew. What matters is how much can be meaningfully assimilated in limited amounts of time (many times minutes or seconds) and most importantly, acted upon to achieve an outcome.
Information overload occurs frequently and very rapidly. My humble observation is that a few different visual and aural call-outs occurring simultaneously (example: a GPWS callout and a TCAS alert) are enough to cause overload in an otherwise quiet flightdeck. If they occur to be in conflict, its worse. With rising stress levels, saturation occurs faster (Salas & Maurino, 2010). The ability to filter, and hone in, on important elements of information being presented is the answer to avoiding overwhelm. I believe that this ability is a function of two things – a) experience and b) personality.
I was reading the September 2015 issue of the Flying Magazine on my way back from a business trip recently. Les Abend, a 777 captain, who features a regular section in the magazine has an interesting article on simulators in the September edition. In fact, he specifically calls out to the evolving role of Human Factors in aviation. He also alludes to the topic of automation diluting core flying skills. Interesting read.
References
Abend, L. (2015, 09). IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE SIMULATOR. Flying, 142, 84-84,86. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/1704438154?accountid=27203
Dunwoody, P. T. (2009). Introduction to the special issue: Coherence and correspondence in judgment and decision making. Judgment and Decision Making, 4(2), 113. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/1011289242?accountid=27203
Foster, Jessica (2015, October 21). https://erau.instructure.com/courses/23563/discussion_topics/200361
Gibb, R., Gray, R., & Scharff, L. (2010). Aviation Visual Perception : Research Misperception and Mishaps. Farnham, Surrey, GBR: Ashgate Publishing Group. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com (Links to an external site.)
Ledesma, Julio. (2015, October 19). Message posted to https://erau.instructure.com/courses/23563/discussion_topics/200361
Mosier, K., Sethi, N., McCauley, S., Khoo, L., Richards, J., Lyall, E.. . Hecht, S. (2003). Factors impacting coherence in the automated cockpit. Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting Proceedings, 47(1), 31-31.
Salas, E., Jentsch, F., & Maurino, D. (Eds.). (2010). Human factors in aviation. Academic Press.
Sherry, L., Feary, M., Polson, P., & Palmer, E. (2001). What’s it doing now? Taking the covers off autopilot behavior. In Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Aviation Psychology (pp. 1-6).
