Frasca International is growing its presence in China and now has more than two dozen simulators located in the country. While most of these are for smaller trainer-type piston-powered single-engine and twin-engine airplanes, about a year ago Frasca installed a Level D-qualified full-motion Cessna Citation CJ1+ flight simulator for Nanshan International Flight Academy. “It’s a pretty good market for us,” said company CEO John Frasca. Here at ABACE 2016, Frasca is exhibiting at Booth P822.

The popularity of Frasca simulators in China probably has to do with what most of the world is facing, a challenge keeping the pipeline flowing with new pilots for airlines, business aviation and other operators. “It’s the pilot shortage,” Frasca said. We’re seeing a lot of activity with ab initio schools.” Another growing flying segment in China is the helicopter industry. “There is a lot of talk about helicopters,” he said, “and it’s been a slow but accelerating segment. As the demand grows for helicopter missions, that will expand the need for pilots and push for more training.”

In February, Frasca delivered a Robinson R44 Level 5 flight training device (FTD) to Sky Safari General Aviation in Shanghai. The R44 FTD accurately replicates the real Robinson helicopter’s cockpit and features Frasca’s TruVision visual system. A month earlier, Frasca delivered a Cessna 172R Level 5 FTD to flight training provider Sichuan Feiyun Chuangtian General Aviation. “What’s interesting in China,” Frasca said, “is that they tend to be going for Level 5 FTDs, which is quite a bit more complex than AATDs [advanced aviation training devices] that you see in the U.S. China’s taken the high road in terms of simulator requirements, which is quite a positive thing.”

Frasca International has been building flight simulators since 1958, and now its products are located in 70 countries. The company has built more than 1,600 simulators. “We’ve got some really good technology,” said Frasca, “and can build a really nice full-flight simulator. When we did the CitationJet for Nanshan International Flight Academy, it was Level D and approved by the Chinese authorities with only very minor discrepancies. We also do quite a few helicopter full-flight simulators such as the Sikorsky S-92 and S-76 and Airbus 225, and a lot of advanced FTDs. The highest FTD is a Level 7, and in almost all respects it’s equal to a full-flight simulator without motion.”

For helicopter pilots, hovering is one of the most challenging aspects of training, and getting a simulator to accurately model hovering is extremely difficult. “The aerodynamics are so much more complicated,” he said. “You’re riding a bubble of air, and every movement of the cyclic is critical.” The problem is that FTDs lack motion cues, and pilots feel motion faster than they see visual evidence of movement on a simulator’s visual display. What Frasca International has done to solve this problem is develop a much more sophisticated motion base that reacts faster to flight control movements. Instead of the large 152-centimeter (60-inch) actuators found on a full-flight simulator, the new design features 15-cm (six-inch) actuators mounted to a cockpit cuing platform inside the simulator dome. This makes for a smaller payload to be moved by the smaller actuators, because only the cockpit has to be moved instead of the entire heavy dome. At the same time, Frasca designers added more content in visual scenes to give pilots the correct visual feedback.

“There are a lot of really smart engineers who work here,” said Frasca. “That’s how we developed this. They realized the problem. Our little platform is substantially faster than a full-flight simulator. That’s the secret. Simulators are wonderful pieces of hardware,” he concluded, “but they have to be tied into the curriculum and used properly.”