BOAC VC 10 FLIGHT SIMULATORS
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 10:11 pm
Having just found this very interesting web site relating to possibly the best looking airliner ever produced in the UK, may even beat Concorde, I was amazed to find the article relating to the BOAC VC-10 flight simulators.
I hesitated as to whether I should write this article and own up to the fact that I wrote the maintenance manuals for these very simulators. But a certain amount of history is attached to these particular simulators designed and manufactured by Redifon in 1963.
One of the terms of the contract was that system diagrams and the maintenance manual chapters needed to confirm to the numbering system defined in the ATA-100 specification.
Enter stage left (or was it right?), yours truly, after spending over twelve years as a radio fitter in the RAF I answered an advert for a technical writer at Redifon and duly started work there in April 1963. Now I did just about know one end of a pencil from another but ATA-100? I was presented with the document to read and informed that I would be writing the said manuals, talk about thrown in at the deep end, I was. No other member of the department knew anything about this spec. I remember reading it from cover to cover and being none the wiser. Aircraft systems were defined by unique numbers, various topics had different page numbers, paragraph headings were either numerical or alphabetical depending on the ‘weight’ of the subject, so on and so forth. And this new kid on the block was the expert, ho! ho!!.
Then of course several features of the simulator were unique to it not having an aircraft defined counterpart. Among these were the various amplifiers (valve driven) and servo mechanisms. It had been agreed that these would be described in Chapter 4, which at the time was either a Chapter not defined by ATA or a topic that could not be confused. Obviously the simulator by its very nature simulated the aircraft electrical system (Chapter 24), Controls (Chapter 27), and many others. Other systems, e.g. Sound, Flight, Visual were unique to the simulator so System/Chapter numbers were agreed with the customer and gradually I soon got up to speed and completed the project on time. I shudder to think what the content was like, as little if any engineer or customer vetting was done.
As a result of this contract, the system gradually developed and became the company standard. One of my last tasks before retiring was to produce manuals in 1989, for an Integrated Avionics Trainer which the company (by now Rediffusion Flight Simulation) manufactured for the US Navy via Boeing, Huntsville. I well remember explaining the ATA-100 principal to the Navy Technicians who of course were more used to using manuals written to military specifications. So the format that I began in 1963 had stood the test of time. I think I had also done the same and that the content and usefulness of the documents had improved somewhat. To my knowledge this equipment and the manuals are still being used (2012) with the trainer now residing at Tinker Air Force base, Oklahoma City. Tinker also has fond memories for me and my wife when I was involved in the USAF E-3A project, but that is another story, as they say.
I wonder if Thales at Crawley still use the ATA-100 system, I very much doubt it?
I hesitated as to whether I should write this article and own up to the fact that I wrote the maintenance manuals for these very simulators. But a certain amount of history is attached to these particular simulators designed and manufactured by Redifon in 1963.
One of the terms of the contract was that system diagrams and the maintenance manual chapters needed to confirm to the numbering system defined in the ATA-100 specification.
Enter stage left (or was it right?), yours truly, after spending over twelve years as a radio fitter in the RAF I answered an advert for a technical writer at Redifon and duly started work there in April 1963. Now I did just about know one end of a pencil from another but ATA-100? I was presented with the document to read and informed that I would be writing the said manuals, talk about thrown in at the deep end, I was. No other member of the department knew anything about this spec. I remember reading it from cover to cover and being none the wiser. Aircraft systems were defined by unique numbers, various topics had different page numbers, paragraph headings were either numerical or alphabetical depending on the ‘weight’ of the subject, so on and so forth. And this new kid on the block was the expert, ho! ho!!.
Then of course several features of the simulator were unique to it not having an aircraft defined counterpart. Among these were the various amplifiers (valve driven) and servo mechanisms. It had been agreed that these would be described in Chapter 4, which at the time was either a Chapter not defined by ATA or a topic that could not be confused. Obviously the simulator by its very nature simulated the aircraft electrical system (Chapter 24), Controls (Chapter 27), and many others. Other systems, e.g. Sound, Flight, Visual were unique to the simulator so System/Chapter numbers were agreed with the customer and gradually I soon got up to speed and completed the project on time. I shudder to think what the content was like, as little if any engineer or customer vetting was done.
As a result of this contract, the system gradually developed and became the company standard. One of my last tasks before retiring was to produce manuals in 1989, for an Integrated Avionics Trainer which the company (by now Rediffusion Flight Simulation) manufactured for the US Navy via Boeing, Huntsville. I well remember explaining the ATA-100 principal to the Navy Technicians who of course were more used to using manuals written to military specifications. So the format that I began in 1963 had stood the test of time. I think I had also done the same and that the content and usefulness of the documents had improved somewhat. To my knowledge this equipment and the manuals are still being used (2012) with the trainer now residing at Tinker Air Force base, Oklahoma City. Tinker also has fond memories for me and my wife when I was involved in the USAF E-3A project, but that is another story, as they say.
I wonder if Thales at Crawley still use the ATA-100 system, I very much doubt it?