You probably heard of simmers who take the hobby to the next level and build their own cockpit replicas. Maybe you've even built your own cockpit yourself. But how about not building just one, but keeping building them and selling them for real money? Meet the guys from Pacific Simulators in New Zealand: Russell, Steve, Stuart and Mike, who build professional Boeing 737-800 cockpits, and created their very own franchise. What started out as harmless fun is now an award winning business that started to expand into overseas markets.

When I visited Pacific Simulators in Christchurch earlier this year, the guys were busy assembling their first simulators that were going to ship to Australia. An exciting time for Pacific Simulator, as this was their first step into running their sims overseas. In the past two years, they built several sim for use in NZ, mainly their Flight Experience franchise. Despite already being inundated with enquiries from the UK, North America and Asia, they are determined to take it slow. Expanding in New Zealand first gives them the opportunity to trial a few things, iron out any complications and make things robust. Next stop is Australia, which will be the test bed for overseas operations.

So why the caution? Well, once the sims are installed, they mostly get a 12 to 14 hour workout. This means there is a certain amount of wear and tear and, like real airplanes, the sims need to be serviced. Image every time a screw needed tightening one of the guys would have to jump onto a plane. That's why Pacific Simulators have developed a whole system to do repairs remotely. Russell is currently writing a maintenance manual which will help the identification of parts remotely. Imagine an operator from overseas calls and says, the knobby thing on the left-hand side is a bit loose. The knobby thing of what? With the help of the maintenance manual the operator can identify the part and say, number 6 on panel overhead 1 is loose, and the guys from Pacific Simulators know exactly what the operator is talking about.

Remote servicing of the cockpits isn't the only worry when expanding overseas though. New Zealand doesn't have a suing culture, however other countries do. The sims are carefully designed to eliminate possibilities of injury and have been tested and certified. There are no sharp edges. There are safety switches, for example, if someone gets their clothes caught. The lights all use 10 W bulbs, which means you can't burn your fingers.

Another legal complication is of course that Boeing is a real company and there are trademark and copyright issues. Boeing has been involved right from the beginning, but the Pacific Sim guys say that Boeing isn't really interested from a business point of view. Boeing lawyers had a look through the promotional material and website to check it's all fine, but from their point of view they are only concerned about someone using a not fully certified trainer under the impression that it’s an official Boeing trainer and then crashing the real thing.

So, where do you get the idea from to build Boeing simulators and sell them commercially? Well, like many businesses, this was no big master plan, it all grew dynamically. In the early nineties, Russell had a shot at his private pilot license, but being a father to a young family he eventually ran out of funds. His wife felt sorry for him and bought him a copy of FS3. He fired it up and thought, hey, that's cool, but not really that realistic. Being a self confessed tinkerer, he went out and built a generic box that served as a real cockpit - and hence Russell's first cockpit was born.

In '95, he got a ride in a backseat of an Airmachi. After that he went straight home and rebuilt his little generic box according to the Airmachi layout. One day, he was flying online, and Steve, another kiwi simmer, was his controller. After a little chat, they discovered they actually lived quite close by. So Russell invited Steve around to his place to show him his little Airmachi cockpit and they became firm friends. One day, Russell told Steve that he always wanted to build a dual seater, so Steve agreed to help him and the concept of building a 767 was born.

As they got started, they quickly realised that they didn't understand much of the software side. Another little project was to build some scenery. They needed a good camera to take some airshots and were asking for help on a local flight sim discussion board. The person with the camera turned out to be Stuart. They did the flights, took the photos, and afterwards showed Stuart the 767. They explained their software problems, and Start said, that's easy. So Stuart became another good friend and joined the team.

Russell's plan was to build the 767 within a year, which meant the three had to sacrifice most weekends and evenings during that year to get it done. As the 767 sim came alive, word started to spread in Christchurch. Pilots kept coming in and saying you got an opportunity for business. What they could learn from this realistic replica, they were learning from cardboard cutouts. So Russell, Steve and Stuart did a business course. But not to build a business around their sim, as they still were skeptical. They were thinking of opening a business to claim back tax on the money they spent on parts. Once they had done the course however, they were all fired up and decided to give it a go.

One of the pilots who had been visiting them had a warehouse which he rented cheaply. Pacific Simulators was born. Mike heard about the whole start-up and approached them and asked if they wanted an investor. To give a bit of background, Mike built a multimillion real estate empire, owned part of a New Zealand Airline and also runs a V8 racing team, so Mike has earned himself quite a reputation amongst entrepreneurs. Russell, Steve, and Stuart weren't as much interested in money, because they had acquired some government grants, as they needed someone with business building experience. Mike became CEO and the rest is history.

So, how are the sims built and how long does it take to build one? A production line sim is built between 4-6 weeks, including testing, but the very first sim took one year, as there was a fair bit of trialing to be done on how to manufacture the parts best. The sims are all built from plans and acquiring these plans was the first hurdle to be overcome. If you want to build a realistic sim, you need accurate blueprints.

Luckily the guys from Pacific Simulators had access to 747s and could work from the original. Air New Zealand and Pacific Blue (Virgin) were both very helpful by allowing free access to their 747s. So the crew spent a number of nights in 747 cockpits measuring dimensions and angles and drawing blueprints. The final sim cockpit looks like an exact replica of the real thing, but Steve jokingly admits that beneath the cockpit shell everything is smoke and mirrors.

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To give another example of how accurate the cockpit is and where shortcuts were taken, Russell explains the seats. Again, they were measured from the real thing and look like the real thing. However, the real seat has 9 different axes and movements and costs $120,000. The Pacific Simulator ones look like the real thing but only slide backwards and forwards.

The final cockpit is an almost exact replica of the real thing, and also appears to be working like the real thing. You have your working landing gear, autothrottle, speedbrake, spoilers, flaps, tiller and hydraulic dampeners. The MCP is fully functional, except for control wheel steering, (which Qantas now bars out anyway). The autopilot works including disconnect. The standby gauges are operational. For simplicity, the 2 flight management computers are linked together, but otherwise work like the real thing, including the engine pages which are programmed from the manufacturing manual. Finally, the electric system is also fully functional. For example, the Lights go bright - transition - dull when switched on, just like in a real Boeing.

While most parts of the sim are manufactured locally, Pacific Simulators had to go overseas to get the control columns made. They are built in Australia using rapid prototyping technology. This involves a large microwave like apparatus into which the material gets squeezed and then you can watch how out of nothing the columns form with the help of lasers. Fascinating stuff.

The brains behind all of this complex functionality is a customized software package, which is Stuart's baby. While Pacific Simulators are using some Magenta software to interface with FS2004 (which drives the visuals), most of the software is written by Stuart. Steve, who also modified the flight model to make it more realistic, says that they develop their own software because they don't want to become reliant on 3rd party solutions. It took 1.5 years to develop the current software and development is still ongoing. Each sim has their own dedicated computer. Now get this. Pacific Simulators can access each sim in the world remotely from New Zealand and update the software to the latest version. Via this system older sims can gain new functionality as the software matures, even if they are located at the opposite end of the world.

Whom are the sims built for? As we wrote earlier, the initial motivation was flight training. Indeed Mt Cook and Qantas use the sims, however not as training devices, but to evaluate applicants and see if they are pilot material. The main business though is built around Flight Experience which allows people like you and me to experience a simulated flight in a realistic B737 cockpit. As Russell says, most customers want to experience how it feels like to fly a heavy jet for real; how it feels like to take off and then land again. Flight Experience lets you just do that. For an in depth review of Flight Experience, have a read of our article from issue #1.

We'd like to thank Russell, Steve and Stuart for spending a few hours with me and showing me around their offices and warehouse. It's certainly been a fascinating experience and it's inspiring to see what other people can make happen if they put their mind to it. Sim Pilot Magazine wishes Pacific Simulators all the best for their future!