Hello all,

I am Ariana Bhalla, the secretary of the Aviation and Pilot club at RIT, and this is the first blog posting for our club. So far, our goals include:

1) Fixing the flight simulator so that it operates in the correct 2 degrees of freedom (this has to be only an unmanned prototype).
2) Finding a permanent club space for meetings and working.
3) Researching designs for a new flight simulator to be built next year, that can operate in all 3 degrees of freedom.
4) Organizing fund raisers to raise money for next year's project.

The current flight simulator is on its way to being operational -- not capable of holding a humans weight safely, however. It will be used as a prototype and an example of the club's interests and direction. We are hoping to incorporate the idea of a gyro into the next model, in order to improve the realistic aspects of movement in an aircraft.

As some of us know, the flight sim prototype had to be fixed because of a problem with unintentional yaw. It was built to only handle pitch and roll, and due to some mismeasurements, there was too much play in the pins holding the platform to the actuators. This caused the platform to rotate in a direction that it was not designed for, consequently bending a bracket and part of one of the actuators. During the month of June, I had been working with Ryan Woods, our president, on creating new parts for the flight sim to replace to ones that allowed it to break. We aquired scrap aluminum from a metal shop in Rochester, and I machined the peices that were required to close the gaps in the joints. I am now at home, away from RIT, and Ryan is finishing the parts, by drilling holes for the screws that will hold bracket in place. He is also creating additional shims out of aluminum to fill the space holding the brackets to the moving arms. With these problems fixed, and a better power supply, the machine should be able to move without any issues. I will keep posting information to update readers on the progress of our project as we get closer to acheiving our goals.

-Ariana B.