Industry Skilling: KC-30A training | ADM August 2011
Julian Kerr | Sydney and Madrid
A Full Flight and Mission Simulator (FFMS) and two complex training devices currently being installed at RAAF Amberley for the KC-30A multi-role tanker/transport (MRTT) could allow KC-30A pilots and air refuelling officers to become certified for the type without having actually flown in it.
This is unlikely to occur given the complex and challenging nature of an air-to-air refuelling mission, says Peter Redman, Operations Director of simulator company CAE Australia. However, given the capabilities of the full motion FFMS – eligible for zero flight time training of civil pilots when converting from one airliner type to another – and the fidelity of the accompanying Integrated Procedures Trainer (IPT) and Air Refuelling Officer (ARO) Part Task Trainer (PTT), Redman says the RAAF will be able to conduct a significant amount of the KC-30A training requirement in a synthetic environment.
CAE Australia, a subsidiary of Canadian parent company CAE, is providing the simulator and trainers under subcontract to Airbus Military. It will support them until at least 2018 as part of the company’s Management and Support of the ADF’s Aerospace Simulators (MSAAS) contract, under which it already supplies maintenance, engineering and training services for Black Hawk, C-130H/J, Sea Hawk and Sea King simulators.
The contract includes the synthetic training of aircrew. “Effectively, we will take a pilot in the front door, he can be transferred from any operational unit or he can be coming straight off PC-9s – he will do his conversion course with us and he will then be qualified to sit in the co-pilot’s seat of a KC-30A”, said Redman.
Unusually, a number of CAE pilots, flight engineers and loadmasters are providing in-aircraft instruction as well as synthetic training on the RAAF’s C-130H/Js as contractors, something which Redman is hopeful may later be extended to the KC-30A fleet.
Meanwhile, the focus is on the installation and commissioning at Amberley of the synthetic devices, all three of which can be operated independently, separately, or linked up to provide a comprehensive mission-based scenario.
Definition activities for the FFMS began around 2006, with development and testing underway since 2008 at CAE’s Montreal headquarters. This began with a “green”A-330 simulator and flight model which has been steadily progressed with the completion of MRTT design changes and a flow of data from Airbus Military on the KC-30A’s flight characteristics, including the extra drag caused by the refuelling pods and boom.
“The KC-30A looks like an A-330 but Airbus Military have done a huge amount of modification to the systems running within the aircraft; there are probably as many military systems as there were civil systems and integrating that into our simulator while the aircraft been in development and test has been quite a challenge”, said Peter Natale, CAE’s MRTT program manager.
“This is a very complex device, on the scale of things it’s way beyond a normal A-330 simulator”.
The FFMS currently matches the original MRTT aircraft in all aspects except the flight model, which is still representative of an A-330. Full Level D certification is anticipated in May 2012 when the FFMS and the two training devices will have been updated with final flight test data and software modifications to the boom system, including indicators and warnings and improvements to the human/machine interface of the boom operator’s 3D display.
However, Natale is optimistic that FFMS testing will have been completed by December and the simulator will be able to prove its worth from January in an interim certification stage.
The ARO PTT was described by Redman as an extremely sophisticated device – static, but probably as complex as the FFMS, with seven visual channels as opposed to five on the FFMS to facilitate the 3D goggles and display used by the ARO during a refuelling mission.
Unlike earlier air-to-air tankers such as the KC-10 and KC-135, the KC-30A ARO is located in the cockpit rather than near the tail of the aircraft where he was able to visually judge aircraft positioning .
“The 3D capability is absolutely essential because if you’re looking at a screen you have no sense of depth, you’d have no concept of how far the boom is from the receiver and you wouldn’t be able to make a connection”, Natale commented.
For its part, the IPT enables the pilot and co-pilot to run through the procedural aspects of flight management without the need for flight controls, visuals or motion.
“When they get into the full mission simulator they won’t be fumbling around for switches and menus, they’ll have worked their way through the lessons on the various front-end systems and they’ll know where it all is,” Natale said.
Subject: Air