The Making Of Sim-Zone

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The Sim-Zone technical team: Suzanne, Ethan, Martin

Contents

Intro

In 2004+2005, I bought and installed my very own Full Flight Simulator, meant for rental to non-pilots (flying enthusiasts and ordinary people looking for an unusual thrill). This is the story of Sim-Zone.

The Idea

In early 2004, I had the habit of randomly browsing through EBAY actions with price tags >10.000 EUR, looking for interesting industrial offers. At that time, my main business was dealing with large industrial machines, especially components from bankrupt datacenters, like airconditioners, raised flooring, UPS system, diesel generators, etc. So one day I stumbled upon this guy offering a "flight simulator" for about 10.000 EUR, which was a portable one for setting up at fairs. He described it very enthusiastically, pointing out how much could be earned by the fares, and how low the cost of operation was. Finally, in the fine print, I discovered that it was really just a "motion ride" with a movie than plays, and the ride just moves in sync with the movie. No control by the rider, not a real simulation. Disappointed, while closing the browser window, I had the idea: Why not see if there are out-of-date REAL simulators around, that I could get for a reasonable price, and setup and run myself? Surely there must be 25-year-old airplane models that go out of service, and the Simulators with them? Well, I started Googling for "Full Flight Simulator"...

The Search for a Simulator

The 737-200 Cockpit

My first finding led me to Sabena Flight Academy in Brussels. They had a 1976 737-200 Simulator for sale, were asking 500k$. I took packed my girlfriend Irina and another friend Rolf into the car and drove the 400km to go see it. None of us had ever seen a full flight simulator before, not even been in the same room with one yet. We were met by Mr. van Overmeeren and one of the Sim's technicians. We were shown the hydraulic pump, the computer room, and then taken for a short flight in the Sim. It turns out it was a rather short-legged 3-axis simulator, not 6DOF, and as such didnt look very impressive from the outside. The visual was only 2 windows (only straight forward for pilot+copilot) and black&white. (no wonder, since the visual was from 1976!) All in all, I wasnt too impressed.

Sabena's 737-200 FFS is still in operation (as of Oct.12th 2007).

Then, on the website http://www.barnstormers.com, I discovered an MD-82 that was already disassembled and stored in Brussels, being offered by Joel Plaice. The price tag was under 200k$. The big hitch was, since it was all sealed up, and had been in storage for 4 years, I had no idea what it really looked like, in what condition it was in, even photos of the Sim before it's decommisioning were scarce. But I met with the owner, a businessman from Switzerland, he assured me it was in top condition, seemed to like my idea, and made me an irresistable offer. So I took it :-) At that time I had about 150.000 EUR in the bank, no facility yet, no Sim technician, not even a place where I could have stored the flight deck. And no real financial plan. My basic plan was, go rent a warehouse somewhere, put up the Sim somehow, solve any problems along the way as they occur, and start taking money from the thousands of people that would surely line up to fly :-)

The MD-82 Airplane

MD-82 on airliners.net

The Search for a Facility

So in April 2004, I started looking for a suitable facility. First I looked at a place in Schwalbach. It was nice, clean, had a crane, nice floor, wide door, toilets, enough power, and the landlord was friendly. I don't remember exactly why I didnt take it, probably it seemed too small at the time, and it was only the first one I looked at and wanted to see more. Had I known how much work the later chosen location would need, I might have decided differently.

Next my eye was caught by an 850m² warehouse in the middle of Frankfurt (Schmidtstr.) Here the landlord was even more enthusiastic about my project, and immediately gave me a key and permission to start work. The size and shape was great, there was room for 2 Simulators (yes, I was keeping future expansion in mind), but the place was stuffed with steel shelves. No problem, we thought, just take down all the shelves, I paid the landlord a deposit and started planning. 2 days later my architect came with disappointing news: The warehouse was actually designed in such a way that it relied on the shelving for structural integrity. Also the foundation was too thin to accomodate the simulator, and the ground underneath was too soft to just pour more concrete and make a thicker floor, it just wouldn't work out. So I got my desposit back and continued looking.

Then I found a place which awed me. 18m high, 21m wide, 85m long, with a huge crane, 2x 6m wide gates, and a very solid floor. It was huge, but I fell in love with it. Before my inner eye, I could just see 5 Simulators side by side, just like I had seen at CAE in Brussels. Thats where I saw myself in 5 years.

575m² Warehouse in Schwalbach

Warehouse in Frankfurt, Schmidtstr.

Warehouse in Hattersheim

Enter Suzanne

One day in early October 2004, I get this email, something like: "Hey I heard you're building a Sim, need an engineer?" - The timing couldnt have been better if I had just sat down behind the wheel of a new car and someone had offered me the ignition key. And having her aboard just about made the difference of starting a car with or without the key. I was delighted and after a short acquaintance, she moved to Germany in November and we joined forces.

Facility Construction Issues

If you ever do something like this, don't do it in Hessen. In Hessen (but not in some other German states), the "change of building usage" is administratively equivalent to a whole new building permit. So just to say "okay we're gonna setup a Simulator in this building, instead of storing balls of paper" meant involving architect's drawings, a structural engineer, new fire evacuation plans, proof of parking space, water suppy and drainage planning, etc. etc... I wonder how people tolerate all this. Just for some paperwork, this causes months of delay and over 10.000 EUR in costs.

The Fight for Financial Support

The Delivery

The first truckload of Sim parts arrives, Irina checks the loadsheet while I unload with a forklift

2 truckloads of Sim parts line the wall where the container building will later stand

Preassembly of the motion base (will later be rotated 180°)

Right from the start we allowed our fans to watch via webcam

The boxed flight deck (7,3m x 5,5m x 3,7m) arrives on a flatbed truck

Truck and box fit nicely through the door, but can't turn sharply enough to get inside...

...so we simply unpack the box outside...

...popped over to the nearest hardware store, got a chainsaw and cut out the box floor simulator shaped...

...and then easily drove inside. (Notice the loading ramp, forcing the sharp turn)

Meanwhile 2 cranes are waiting inside...

...to lift the Sim off the truck...

...move it over the waiting motion base...

...and hold it still for 4 hours while we assemble the jacks.

The Installation

First task was unreeling and untangling the thousands of meters of cables that had been wrapped around the flight deck

The Website

Homepage: http://sim-zone.de

Right from the beginning, I wanted a website that was a selling machine. I wanted to be found by search machines, the site to be quick-loading, look good but not be overloaded, informative, and most important, make visitors want to BUY NOW. None of the other simulator flight websites allowed you to book a flight right there and then, best you could do was to email the operator and hope for a timely reply. I wanted to have a booking site that offered the Sunday Evening visitor a wide variety of possible booking dates and times, and to allow him to book his favourite appointment, pay online, and download his ticket, right there and then, just like booking a flight on the Ryanair website. And thats exactly what we did. The result: http://sim-zone.de/buchen/buchen.php

Here the customer could select which package he wanted:

  • 149,- EUR: one person in a group of three, rotates every 20mins during the 1 hours flight, each guest gets 20mins as PIC, F/O, and passenger
  • 219,- EUR: one person in a group of two, 30mins each as PIC and F/O
  • 429,- EUR: full hour booking, either fly alone for a full hour, or bring 1 or 2 friends and decide yourself how to split up

After selecting the package, and in which week he would like his appointment (including the current week!), he was automatically offered any free slots on any days of that week, but only ones which were free slots in an already existing flight, or adjacent to one. So our opening times were dynamically controlled by the bookings, empty spaces in the plan were avoided. Example: If there was a single place in a group of 3 booked for Friday 18:00, the next customer wanting a place in a group of three on that date, is only offered that time, until the group is full. After that, the slots at 16:00 and 20:00 on Friday are offered. Um... well, I hope you get the point :-)

A gift voucher

After selecting an appointment, the customer can enter personal data and pay online (Credit card or "Lastschrift") for the "ticket". The invoice and voucher confirming the booking are immediately generated online and emailed to the customer. The perfect shopping experience :-)

I originally even wanted to adjust the prices dynamically, like Easyjet/Ryanair do, but it would have gotten unnesessarily complicated so I put that off for later. In the last 4 weeks of operation, I manually added "last minute" bookings for half price, to fill empty slots in the next 24 hours.

We also offered gift vouchers, the buyer could select a package and pay online, and then the webserver created a voucher "ticket" and emailed it automatically and immediately to the buyer. The gift recipient could then use the voucher code to book his appointment, just like described above. Somewhat suprising to me was that 90% of our sales turned out to be the gift vouchers. It seems that the market for "unusual events for just anybody" was far larger than the market "flight enthusiasts".

The Fun-Flight Concept

Sim-Zone reception desk

First off, I'd like to give a lot of credit to Dirk Becker, ex-MD80 and current 747 pilot. He voluntarily created the complete guideline for our 45-minute learn-to-fly-an-airplane course, spending hundreds of hours taking photos and videoclips and implementing them into a powerpoint presentation, which was so good that it stayed practically unchanged from start until the end. He also took over job interviewing and training our funflight pilots, as well as myself and Suzanne. Our funflight concept:

Learn to Fly in 45 minutes
  • Meet the participants about 15mins before starting time, offer free drinks, get aquianted in the waiting area, with full view of the simulator. Our funflight pilots were all examined ATP pilots, and wore white pilot shirts (although without any shoulder stripes).
  • 45 minute briefing, teaching basic flight control (aileron, stabilizer, rudder, flaps, speedbrake, toebrakes, thrust) and the most important instruments (flight director, autothrottle, autopilot, altimeter, radalt, airspeed) and an overview of steps to go through when starting and landing (flaps setting, speed bugs, milestone speeds, landing gear, etc.). Guests who had never flown before, at least they had an overview but of course were told everything again step by step during the flight. Guests who already had flight experience could learn more details about MD80 and do most of the steps themselves.
DVD recording screenshot
  • During the simulator flight, guests were always seated in front, the instructor stayed at the instructor station. Other funflight operators are known to act as copilot and move lots of the controls themselves; it was important to me that our guests actually do everything themselves, the instructor used a laserpointer to point out the necessary actions to pilot and copilot, and only manually intervened when a guest was way too overwhelmed. The autopilot was rarely engaged, the pilot had to keep the plane on course manually using the flight director. The copilot was also quite busy changing course, speed (we did use autothrottle), and flaps/gear during the 15 minute round trip, usually at a Hamburg scenario. The loop was timed so that the first landing was about 15 minutes after takeoff. During landing, again our guest pilot did everything manually. Usually the landing was rather hard, or slightly off the runway, but "survivable" and so gave the pilot a good feeling of accomplishment. After the first landing we reset the plane onto the incoming locator at 10NM out, so as to do another landing in the last 5 minutes. Depending on how well the first landing went, we sometimes added some wind or turbulance, or worsened the visual conditions, to make the second landing a little more exciting.
  • After the flight, we showed the guests that the whole session had been recorded on DVD video, via a splitscreen recording showing a cockpit overview, the pilot's face from front, and an outside view of the simulator moving. This DVD was available for sale for 10 EUR, and every single one (I think there was only one exception) were sold.


The B707 offer

The B707 Simulator

Remember my saying that I was already keeping expansion in mind? Well, in Octrober 2004, LFT Frankfurt contacted me, saying they were getting rid of their Boeing 707 simulator and would give it to me for free, if I agreed to remove it completely in 4 weeks time. Suzanne, my architect and I went to see it. It used a hanging motion system, looked quite different from other systems, and because of the large metal frame that the Sim hung from like a fairground swing, it used a lot of space. Since we had plenty of space, that wouldnt be an issue for us. It was an irresistable offer, also because the Sim was still certified and if we succeeded in moving it and getting it recertified, we could even do some business with airlines on it. The downside was, that we already were very pinched for money, and the additional cost of taking it down (even though the transport costs would be quite low, since our site was only located 20km from the airport) would really strain our budget. As it turned out, before we could agree to take it, the offer was withdrawn by Lufthansa.

Media Appearances

One of my interviews on HR

(All in German)

Radio

  • HR-Info 24.02.05 During the construction phase, a local radio station (HR info) featured us with a 3-minute report
  • HR-Info 24.07.05 Shortly after opening, they came back and accompanied one of our first customers

Newspapers

Article in Playboy Magazine

(replace -01 with -02,-03,-04,-05 to see all pages)

Television

Marketing and Partners

  • skytravel24.de
  • Intercity Hotel
  • MyDays
  • Joffi


The Closing

The Sale

The Decommissioning

And now?

So what happened to all the people that worked so hard on this project? (as of Oct 2007)

  • Ethan is currently writing this page ;-)
  • Suzanne works as a Simulator Engineer for Lufthansa in Vienna
  • Martin has finished his Master's Degree in computer science, and is now cofounder of a small software company
  • Irina is finishing her degree in computer science and working as a freelance IT project manager
  • Dirk is still flying for Cargolux
  • Markus now flies for an airline
  • Alexander still works at Lufthansa
  • Thomas... uh... gotta call him and ask *gg*
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