SIM OPS announced their intention to develop a parts trading website at last year’s FSEMC in Utrecht. We recently went live with the resulting SIM PART website. We caught up with one of the architects of the system, Graham Pritchard, to learn what this was all about, what it was aimed at and why it was being done. Q- Sim Ops  Can you explain what exactly SIM PART is? A - Graham Pritchard Yes, SIM PART is a tool, based around a web portal to facilitate companies with parts for sale, be those surplus parts from an operator or new parts from a supplier, to list their parts. Potential b ..read more

In June 2014 the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) flight simulation group held a conference in London entitled “Keeping Flight Simulators Current & Capable”. At this conference one of the Sim Ops partners presented a paper; now, nearly ten years on, we thought it a good time to take another look at this topic. There are many aspects that need to be considered but we think they are best looked at in three categories, first of all; Things you have to Keep-Up-To-Date (KUTD) regularly There are some things that you have little choice but to KUTD, either due to regulations or to keep your FST ..read more

Introduction At last year’s FSEMC conference in Utrecht Mark Dransfield from our Sim Ops team gave a presentation entitled “Recurrent Evaluations - A Requiem”.  At the conference,  and subsequently, this presentation generated a lot of questions. Our editorial team caught up with Mark and posed some of these questions. What are the issues that need to be considered? Q - Sim Ops In your presentation you started off asking the audience what they believed the real purpose of doing recurrent evaluations is. Did you get the answer you expected?  A - Mark Dransfield It was interesting ..read more

Introduction We've become used to explaining the difference between qualification and certification to newcomers to the industry: but are also still often surprised how some people already in the industry get the terminology wrong. TDM press releases,  LinkedIn, and highly respected trade publications are frequently guilty of reporting newly ‘certified’ FSTDs. But this blog isn't all about that, if there is one thing we’ve found that there is a groundswell of opinion on it is that certification would be a good thing. But we’re not so sure so we thought we'd take a look at the debate.&nbs ..read more

Introduction With the pick-up in demand for training, we regularly talk to people looking at starting up training centres and have helped some of these with, what is normally, the first step: to write a business case. These can be complicated to write, this blog takes a top-level look at the subject. What are the issues that need to be considered? Airline Vs Independent training centre - Airlines For an airline the primary objective in considering the purchase of their first FSTD will be to save money; most fledgling airlines rely on Full Flight Simulator (FFS) dry lease time for recurrent tra ..read more

At the recent FSEMC conference in Utrecht, the Netherlands, the technology workshop looked at the issues surrounding “Simulator Technician Recruiting, Training and Certification”. The discussion highlighted a number of issues but two particularly resonated with us at Sim Ops. Both of these centred around the problems of having sufficient numbers of maintenance technicians, i.e. that operators were having problems recruiting sufficient numbers of technicians and they were struggling to retain staff they already had. With the predicted increases in aircraft deliveries and shortages of pilots it ..read more

Put any two British males of a certain age together for more than 30 minutes, particularly if in a bar, and inevitably a Monty Python sketch will enter the conversation. While thinking of the Aircraft Manufacturer's (Original Equipment Manufacturers, OEM) involvement in the flight simulation and training industry it put us in mind of the Monty Python film “The Life of Brian” and the classic often quoted line "What did the Romans ever do for us?" (look it up at ,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xad5Rl0N2E) But first let's step back and consider why the OEMs even bother to support the simulatio ..read more

The Sim Ops team has been getting ready for our presence at this autumn's round of industry conferences. Talking to some of our customers we often hear that they would like to go, but have trouble justifying costs to their superiors. So we thought we would take a look at why we think some of the FSTD-related conferences are a good thing. Which Conferences are we talking about? For the commercial simulation industry, there are two principal organisations whose conferences we are attending. Those from; ,The Halldale Group Halldale are the organisers of the World Aviation Training Summit (WATS ..read more

Introduction Between us at Sim Ops, we have heard this statement stated regularly over the years. Having had a conversation predicated on this thought recently we thought we would look at this approach and at spares in general. Oh and spoiler alert, not buying spares is what could be called a brave decision. What types of spares are we talking about? Before we look at the possible spares policies let’s look at some definitions, rather than just thinking of a spares package it helps to categorise them, as always there are different ways to do this but we like these definitions; Rotable Parts ..read more

A few weeks ago we were requested to assist a Customer who was having problems getting their Full Flight Simulator (FFS) motion system to engage. While we were troubleshooting this we realised that, during our combined careers supporting customers, motion problems were some of the most challenging issues for training centres. So this month we thought we would have a look at motion systems and what goes wrong with them. What makes up a motion system? Before looking at the problems though let’s look at a typical 6-axis, hexapod, system containing; Motion actuators - six actuators that physical ..read more