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Comment by daly | Hacker News Reader

I gave my friend an hour in the link trainer for his retirement. He tried to take off, enter the approach, and land. 45 minutes later he failed. When he stepped out of the trainer he had sweat so much he looked like he took a shower.

I got a turn after him. Just a simple task, take off, enter the approach, and "follow the needles" back to the runway. I managed to get it down on the grass parallel to the runway. I also looked like I had taken a shower.

The wild part is that (a) it feels REAL and (b) they added weather while I was flying.

I want one of these at home.

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Your comment made me think of this story: https://interestingengineering.com/a-pensioner-accidentally-...

A 64-year-old French pensioner was recently peer pressured into flying in a fighter jet to celebrate his retirement. The man was so nervous he reached out during the flight and accidentally ejected himself mid-flight, a report from IFL Science reveals. ...

How do you "follow the needles" when the machine has no screens and I guess all you have is communication is with a person outside the machine who tells you where you are? Normally, you'd have a visual on the runway when you land, so I can understand its much more difficult when you're sitting in a dark box with someone just instructing you what to do. Flying by instrument is really really hard, especially if you have zero training.

> they added weather while I was flying

This I don't understand, like they spray water on you when you're in the cockpit or how was this implemented?

Adding weather is likely extra wind and reduced "visual" to the ground

> reduced "visual" to the ground

But there is no "visual" in the first place in the "Link Trainer".

You mean that the gauges start showing false/modified values than what they really should? Or that the outside instructor fuddles with the instructions they give you?

The wind slows or speeds up the aircraft, requiring power adjustments, and changes its ground track, requiring course adjustments. In weather, the wind may be varying as you fly, requiring constant adjustments. When flying by instruments you have to do those adjustments based on what you see on the instruments as there is no outside reference.

Tom said all of the gauges are non-functional. That would seem impossible. Not sure what the point is without them except as a mechanical curiosity.

There's more than one surviving Link Trainer in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Trainer#Surviving_trainer...

The gauges on that particular one have been removed; on others, they may have been replaced, or the radioactive paint stripped off, or the dose deemed low enough to not be worth worrying about.

Yes, it's sadly quite pointless without.

At another point, one of the others mentioned that the original gauges had to be removed because of radium in the dials. It's a bit sad they couldn't have been replaced with non-radioactive replicas.

Does the blue box have any ventilation? The video makes it look like a hot box.

The sweat is because it’s an enclosed box with no ventilation right? Why else would you be sweating, you’re not physically strained too much in it.

Nerves & stress.

I had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours in a full-motion T-38[0] trainer while in the Air Force (a roommate was there TDY making some repairs and needed a hand testing them). The motion makes you feel like you're really in a plane. I made three approaches - the most "successful" of them had me run off the runway into the grass and slide sideways to a stop (landing a jet is no joke). While the Link Trainer is obviously primitive compared to the one I was in, the sensations are just as real, as is the stress of trying your hardest not to crash.

While I will give the Navy grief over nearly everything :) I have the utmost respect for carrier pilots.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6Hs4ll93Ms

I've sweated in a cold AC room.

Btw, sweating when it's cold somehow feels much worse.

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