What is that big box? Well, if you look at it from the other side, you will see something rather more sophisticated than a box. Complete Kodiak cockpit, video visual displays, and electric servo motion.
Today Mark and I came to Pittsburgh, home of Fidelity Flight Simulations to help our friend Jeff Turcotte from Spokane Turbine Center (see Kodiak on Tour and Two and a Half Weeks in April for more info on "STC") in the process of testing the Kodiak simulator (actually an "Advanced Airplane Training Device") that is being developed by Fidelity. Technically this event is called Flight Acceptance Testing ("FAT"), where pilots who have flown the actual airplane run the simulator through maneuvers and critique its "fidelity" to the real thing. After all, if we're trying to simulate a Kodiak, we want it to look, sound and feel as much like a Kodiak as possible!
After the first couple flights we had some suggestions, and after some adjustments of the software by the Fidelity technicians, a final flight for the day revealed marked improvement. Amazing how that works - type in some computer code, and the box behaves differently! Two more days of this "work" (some people would pay to get to do this) and our contribution will be finished.
Hopefully this simulator will be in its bay at STC's facilty on Felts Field in Spokane, WA this summer, and the first mission pilots will be able to fly it as part of their introduction to the Kodiak.
