Bloodhound

The cockpit was actually a Airbus because it had side-stick instead of a yoke. Also, on the attempt with help form "the control tower," they said he was giving instruction based on what Jamie or Adam was telling him what the a/c was doing. I know the console where the instructor was sitting had the monitors with the flight instruments but evertime I noticed them the a/i was straight and level while the a/c was not.

The first attempts had calm winds but it was stated that the assisted attempts had a headwind (I know, big deal) and a little turbulance.

Planespotta

That's the only feature from an Airbus cockpit that simulator had. The PFD, ND, throttles, flaps lever, gear switch, etc. were all from a 757/767.

mcartier713

so they were flying a mutant Boeing 321?

Bloodhound

OK, so I'm bored and skimmed through the epsisode again, thanks to TiVo, and skimmed through airliners.net. I found that it was a NASA variant of something. The sim was at NASA Ames Research facility, not FSX, so I'm guessing that it was a sim of one of their aircraft. 1st, I don't know all of NASA's a/c but I thought they used Boeing's like most gov't entities, not Airbus. It had a side-stick that was slightly different from the A320/18/19/21 pics I saw. The throttle quadrant looked similar to the Boeings but none even came close to identical. On the show I never saw the long-throw gear handle that Boeing uses. The cockpit in the sim wasn't Boeing brown but the PFD and MFD looked more like Boeing, not like ABI. There were other similarities that resembled Boeing but none of the mcould confirm anything.

So my unofficial conclusion is that the sim is that of some NASA variant but I was unable to determine the aircraft. The narrator said it was modeled after a "generic airliner." So, being that it's at a research facility, could it be for research only and the side-stick is for the military pilots being researched? Or just a training platform?

mike734

That makes sence siince the show is filmed in the San Francisco Bay area. The NASA facility is located at Moffett field about half way between SFO and SJC. They have all kinds of interesting sims down there. One of them is capable of generating minus G's for brief moments. The cab is mounted on a elevator like mechanism so it can move up and down very rapidly. It is also the home of, one of, if not THE world's largest wind tunnel.

AZFlyer

Wow, you guys must not have been paying attention.

They clearly say in the show that the sim cockpit is just a generic airliner cockpit.

The computer graphics on screen have nothing to do with what the cockpit is or isnt supposed to be modeled after. Its just 0's and 1's. You can make the computer model look like Snoopy's dog house if you really wanted to.

That cockpit is obviously not at all a 100% Boeing or Airbus product. Just a mish mash of parts stuck together in a motion sim cab. Nothing more.

Anyways...I found the show only so-so.

Bloodhound

Well, it's not that outlandish to assume that the simulator was that of a real aircraft. After all, sims of that size and complexity are built and designed to simulate the flight characteristics of real aircraft. In fact, their characteristics and nuances, and everything related to flight, are continuously updated from data collected on the actual flying aircraft. So the longer the sim is in use, the more accurate it is. So if it is a generic sim, what exactly does it simulate? You can't simulate something that doesn't exist. If it weren't NASA, it wouldn't be that crazy to assume it was an actual aircraft. But because it is NASA, I'm assuming it's a research platform.

FPG120

Oh my God yes.....

We went through this about a year or so ago....

Enough already