Hello all,
I have been away from the forum for a while because of my busy August schedule. Every year
we have our VBS in August and it takes us weeks of hard work to get ready for the week long
program with 75-100 kids attending. But now that is over, and I am ready to get to work planing
our next mission and finish some much needed work on our website. I kind of left things hanging
there but there is only so much time in a day. We are shooting for either a December or January
Launch. We are thinking of using the new Atlantis model, (sorry Dan) that has the auto pilot
launch. The
scenario is for the crew to take Atlantis to a specified orbit, launch a test satellite, then use the
MMU to recover it, grapple it with the robotic arm and return to Kennedy. Each crew member will
be responsible for a specific task and again we will be doing it in real time over a three day
period.
The kids are really excited and can't wait to start the training. The crew is going to be all
teenage girls. The problem is I can't find an adult woman, who is Knowledgeable enough to go as
commander, so I will have to control things remotely if they get into trouble. The system is set up
to do this so that will not be a big deal. Everybody else will work as part of the mission control
team.
I had hoped that the program would appeal to teen boys, and it is doing that. I have several teen
boys that also want to get involved in NASSAC but they are further down the pipe as far far as
training is concerned. The teen girls did a great job on the mission control side of things for our
last mission. Now it is their turn to go.
I am planning on going to the Simulation Convention in Reading PA on September 27th. I will be
entering a simulation contest for landing the "Briefing Time B25J Mitchell bomber. The flight model
is really great. They used a restored B25 for all their digitizing of both the sound and graphics.
They have done a really good job on the flight model and it handles really great in the simulator
with the VMAX Yoke, the Cirrus rudder pedals, Go Flight gear and Elite Throttle Quadrant. They
have put together a great training video and made the actual flight manuals available on CD. It is
a lot of fun to fly. The Instrument panels are especially easy to read and modeled after the real
panels. You have got to try it to believe it. There is a free sampler version available for simmers to
practice the landings for the contest. But be warned you'll get hooked on this and probably end up
buying the package. The money for the B25 package goes to support the Mid Atlantic Air Museum
and restoration program there at Reading Airport. If anybody else is going, please drop me a line
and I'll be sure to look for you there. You can check out the WEB site at
http://www.maam.org/index.html for more information.
High flying regards,
John
P.S. to Dan, how's the work progressing on the DGII updates?
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