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Aviation History
2004
2004-09 - 0409.PDF
different," Roberts says. Other companies eye CAE's continued dominance of the equipment market with envy, and the commercial flight simulation marketplace shows no signs of becoming any less competitive. Re-entering the com mercial market is a major target for NLX, which was acquired last year by avionics giant Rockwell Collins, and there are other companies waiting in the wings. Sterling, Virginia-based NLX had already built up a thriving military simulation business as a small company when it first leapt into the civil market in 1999 with the supply of a Level D simulator for the Cessna Caravan to Pan Am International Flight Academy for FedEx training. This was followed by deal to supply several business-aircraft FFSs to SimuFlite, before it was purchased by CAE. NLX's latest civil device is a Challenger 300 FFS for the busi ness jet's manufacturer, Bombardier, but the privately held company's commercial ambitions were essentially ended by the events of 11 September 2001, says presi dent Tony Syme. With NLX now a Rockwell Collins com pany, those ambitions are being rekindled. The company's US military business is strong and growing, and now Collins plans to use its market presence and name recognition to build NLX's commercial and international business. "For Rockwell Collins, training and simulation is an adjunct market to electronics, and the complexity of avionics demands substan tial training, which make simulation a nat ural fit," says Syme. "For NLX, Collins opens channels to market." "As a small company it was difficult for us to gestate channels to the international market," says Syme, whereas the Collins name is well known to airlines and training centres worldwide. He considers NLX to be one of a select group of only four compa nies with the demonstrated ability to deliver "The immediat future is still demanding, but in the long term the industry will right itself" JEFF ROBERTS, CAE Level D simulators - CAE, FSI and TTS being the others. The link with avionics manufac turer Collins is also likely to result in the company offering a range of part-task to full-flight devices, including flight-manage ment system trainers, he says. Syme will not be drawn on when NLX will break back into the commercial mar ket, but other "newcomers" are already there. Mectronix has built up its capability from general-aviation trainers via flight training devices to full-flight simulators. The CCAFC 737 is the company's first zero- Evans & flight-time (ZFT) simulator, and it will Sutherland's require successful Level D approval before EP-1000CT Mechtronix can claim to have entered the is the latest major league. The biggest challenge may in visual be the visual system, which uses a new realism non-calligraphic image generator devel oped by Redifun Simulation. Previous Level D approvals have involved calligraphic visual systems, but Mectronix's Solnoky says the regulations do not require calligraphy provided the image generator can meet the specifica tions for brightness and resolution. Redifun has already achieved lower, Level C, approval for its NX series of raster-only image generators. At the same time, Mechtronix is devel oping a "non-ZFT" (NZFT) full-flight simu lator, which Solnoky describes as a modern equivalent of a Level B FFS. This will have a shorter-stroke electric motion system and a more compact visual system, allowing the simulator to be located in a 7.3 x 7.3 x 7.3m (24 x 24 x 24ft) room. The target market is smaller airlines that want to avoid the cost of acquiring, or buying time on, expensive Level D machines for recurrent training. CAE's Mechtronix is proposing that airlines use Simfinity NZFT simulators for recurrent training, and range of buy time on Level D machines only for ini- classroom tial and transition training. devices That there is a market for lower-level includes devices is demonstrated by Frasca integrated International, which sold a low-cost Level procedures B simulator for the Cessna Caravan to the trainers m University of Alaska, Anchorage. The com pany, long known for its general aviation flight training devices, is also building a Level C FFS for the Beech King Air 300 for the Japan Civil Aviation Pilot Foundation. Although flight-training devices con tinue to sell, they never caught on to the extent their proponents predicted, and it remains to be seen how the market for lower-cost, lower-level full-flight simula tors will develop. But successful Level D approval of a non-calligraphic image gen erator could have an interesting impact on a commercial flight-simulator visuals mar ket that is dominated by suppliers of high- end, calligraphic-capable systems. There are three main players in the visual market, but FSI's output of Vital 9 systems is almost exclusively for its own use, leaving the market to CAE's Tropos and Evans & Sutherland's EP-1000CT. All three generate photo-realistic imagery, and both Tropos and EP-1000CT are based on PC technol ogy. CAE says it sold 15 visual systems last year, as well as equipping all of its own machines, while E&S says it sold 29 systems - a mix of EP-lOOOCTs and previous-genera tion ESIG-3800GTs. E&S says it has now 35 EP-lOOOCTs since introducing the system late in 2002. There is no surer sign that the commercial flight training community's thirst for greater real ism and better technology remains unabated, and is likely to drive this highly competitive industry for years to come. • DIRECTORY FOLLOWS P48 46 13-19 APRIL 2004 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL www.flightinternational.com
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