415 Log IFR Instrument Currency in an FAA-Approved Simulator + Redbird Factory Tour

Today, we're talking about simulators, and here's why you should care about them.

Last week, we talked about the crash of an epic E1000 at Steamboat Springs, Colorado,

that flew an advisory glide slope below the MDA and crashed into a mountain.

So if you don't understand advisory glide slopes and when you're allowed to descend below

the MDA, please listen to that episode at aviationnewstalk.com slash 414.

Of that pilot had flown that approach in a simulator ahead of time, he would have known

about the issues with flying the approach and would have flown it differently.

Coincidentally, I was in Austin, Texas the day before the accident, and was lucky enough

to visit the Redbird Flight Simulations Factory, and in a moment, I'll be giving you a tour

of that factory.

I was visiting with COO Josh Harnacle, and here's what he said, just 12 hours before that

crash.

But instrument currency is honestly a big, big point on those for sure, and we have lots

of folks that buy them for that and shoot an approach on the Sim before they go do it

in the airplane as a general rule.

I don't shoot approaches that I haven't flown before.

Yeah, that's a great way to go.

Every year, I have to go back for my annual recurrent training in the vision jet.

I always go into just a local ATD simulator, which is to have somewhat generic, but I find

it's really useful just to get in there and kind of remember some of the funny little

gotchas that you find in the instrument world.

And I mentioned that I always get some Sim time before going for my vision jet annual

recurrent check.

What I didn't mention was that I remember a couple years ago when flying in a Sim ahead

of time that the one big thing I took away from my time in the Sim was that it reminded

me that when flying an LNF plus V approach, the autopilot would take me through the MDA.

So simulator time is extremely valuable, both in getting a certificate or rating, and

also in staying current.

So stick around for our fun factory tour.

Hello again and welcome to aviation news talk where we talk general aviation.

My name is Max Trusscott.

I've been flying for 50 years on the author of several books in the 2008 National Flight

Instructor of the Year, and my mission is to help you become the safest possible pilot.

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is sort of what you're doing with me each week.

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And if you've been listening for a while, the show has helped you fly Safer.

Let me ask you for your support.

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And when you do, I'll read your name on the show.

And a moment we'll get to a few of your emails in our main topic in just a minute, but first.

And now here's a headset minute by light speed with Derek Schmidt.

Derek at non-target airports, we often have to use a cell phone to call for clearance.

But if the engine's running, that's a noisy environment.

Tell us what light speed is done to help pilots make these calls sound better.

Well, as cell phones use has become more common, aviation headsets will continually offer

ways of integrating that technology with the headset to help pilots more seamlessly navigate

situations like a clearance call, a non-target airport, initially connecting to a cell phone

required an audio cable in the hard wire connection between the two devices.

With the introduction of Bluetooth technology, headsets and cell phones can now pair to one

another wirelessly, enabling pilots to make cell phone calls without adding another cable

to their cockpit.

Work has also been done now to improve the quality of the cell phone calls made over

the headset.

Most premium aviation headsets on the market have exceptional clarity of communication

over the microphones.

The Zulu 4 headset, for example, is able, during a Bluetooth phone call, to listen for

background noises in the environment and eliminate them during the phone call.

This clears up communication, so operators receiving phone calls will hear the pilot's voice

and not the engine and cockpit noises during the call.

Everyone is always here at improving safety, as missed and garbled communications can

delay clearances or add stress during the critical phase of flight.

And this really works.

I was checking out the Zulu 4, and I gave my friend Rob Marker call while we were taxing.

He said he couldn't hear the engine at all in the background, so great job on designing

this new technology.

Well, I'll let the engineers know.

Derek, thanks so much for joining us here today.

We're happy to be here, Max.

And now let's get to the good news.

First, congratulations to Chaz Ryan.

He says, hello, Max.

And thanks for all that you do.

I began listening to your podcast when I was working on my IFR in 2023.

And a few weeks ago, I earned my CFI certificate.

Thanks so much for keeping me motivated and informed.

Even as a new CFI, I feel that I have so much to learn.

Congratulations, Chaz.

And yes, that's the approach all pilots should take.

Always be trying to learn new things.

That's what helps keep us safe.

And here are a few of your emails.

So these relate to last week's episode about the Epic E-1000 crash in Steamboat Springs,

Colorado.

John Hummer wrote, so glad you're doing this.

You will save lives for sure, just so sad.

My best friend is the TBM pilot.

I'm the Godfather of his daughter.

We constantly tell each other, we never have to be anywhere.

Max, not sure if you remember this, but the first time I saw this phenomena was in my

commander doing the 3-1 X-ray approach at KSUN.

MDA is 6,180 feet, airport elevation approximately 5,300.

I remember flying it, blew right through this 6,180 foot MDA on an advisory glide path,

created by my S-Tech 2100 autopilot.

I wrote you about this then.

Here we are a few years later in this tragedy.

Thanks from all of us for talking about this, it's not taught well enough.

Thanks again to be safe.

Well, thanks so much for that, John.

And here's an email from Brett West in upstate New York, he says, holomex.

Outstanding podcasts concerning the Epic E-1000, never has one of your shows been so full

of useful, rarely covered yet highly necessary information.

I'm a VisionJet owner pilot with more than 2,000 hours.

I am horrified that until this podcast, I have never noticed or understood the notes

in non-precision approach charts that read visual, segment, obstacles 34-1, not clear.

This was just one example of many terrific critical knickets that I've picked up.

I have never answered your calls for financial support, but I've decided to chip in for

the cause.

You have earned it.

I do have one correction for you to consider.

You stated, typically, the vertical path starts at the F-A-F and extends to either the

missed approach point or to 50 feet above the runway where vertical guidance ceases.

The signal is shut off at 50 feet AGL to prevent pilots from attempting to fly a

was signal down to the surface in zero, zero conditions.

This surprised me as I have never noticed the vertical guidance shutting off below 50 feet,

but then again, my eyes are where they should be outside the cockpit at 50 feet.

I record every flight.

I make on GoPro solely for my own debrief, so I went back and looked at a number of those

approaches in my G3000 G2 plus VisionJet, and in every case, the vertical deviation

indicated remained alive until the weight on a wheel switch was detected, which would

be when the aircraft touched down.

The only thing I can think of is perhaps the 50-foot rule is suspended in order to land

equipped aircraft.

Makes sense that auto land would need guidance all the way down.

Thanks again, Max.

Keep them coming.

And you know, the 50-foot item was something that I first wrote about when I put out my

IFR book in 2009, and maybe things have changed since that, so thanks so much for your

comments, Brett.

And here's an email from Doug McElvin in Louisiana.

He says, Hi, Max.

I watched your Patreon video of the simulated flight into steamboat springs and had a few

questions.

And by the way, I've just made that video available for everyone to view, doesn't matter

if you're signed up on Patreon or not.

Just head on out to patreon.com slash aviation news talk, and you'll find it there.

And while you're there, consider supporting the show.

Doug continues.

I don't understand why the simulator was not providing audible terrain alerts while you

were flying toward the mountainside, isn't that the purpose of toss.

Do you think the Garmin G1000 in the epic would have been providing terrain alerts to that

pilot in the real aircraft?

Yes, Doug.

I think that is indeed possible, but I don't know for sure.

And certainly the simulator that I was flying doesn't replicate everything, so that maybe

why there were no alerts.

And by the way, some of those alerts are shut off as you get close to airports, though

this accident occurred about three miles away, so I don't know if it would have been shut

off.

Doug continues.

Also, why do you think Garmin provides an advisory glide path on that GPS approach if

it ultimately leads toward rising terrain?

I've flown LNAV approaches where there is no advisory glide path, which keeps the pilot

high and requires a manual descent.

I'm not sure why they would include an advisory glide path that allows the autopilot to

a couple, knowing it flies into a mountain.

I would really appreciate any thoughts you might have, I love you show.

I've learned a lot and truly feel I'm a safer pilot.

Thanks so much, Doug.

Appreciate that.

We can't tell you why advisory glide paths that fly through mountains are available.

There was a gentleman who wrote to me a few years ago in New York who commented that he

got extremely close to terrain, and when I flew that one, the simulator, it did hit the

mountain there as well, too.

So this is something that's been well known by folks who are conversant and advisory glide

slopes that you cannot trust them below the MDA, and of course, below the MDA, you have

to be visual anyway.

It is kind of unfortunate that they exist.

I think a better solution might be to either cut them off below the MDA or to fly check

all of them so that none of them go through terrain.

By the way, just in the last week or so, the FAA has notummed that particular approach

into steamboat springs as being not available, and that's, I think, notum through September

or October.

So clearly, they have decided to go and re-evaluate that approach.

My guess is that it meets all of the requirements, but that, unfortunately, it leads to disaster

for people who do not precisely follow the non-precision approach rules.

And here's the email from Chris Levasen.

He says, Max, I've been a long-time listener and appreciate your comments on Copa.

That's the serious owner-pilot's association from time to time, writing to you about the

epic crash.

There seems to be a lot of focus on understanding the plus V mode, and yes, that topic deserves

focus, he says.

However, there is also another subtle aspect at play, and that is, even if we as pilots

are experienced, proficient, and know everything, it can still happen to us.

Yes, that's why we need to always be vigilant in the cockpit.

He continues, the case and the point being, knowing where to look, how to confirm, and

actually confirming our planes are doing what we expect them to.

As instrument instructors, there's a lot of focus on the scoreboard andunciations.

So that's the listing of the autopilot modes at the top of the PFD.

He says, not enough focus on the HSI andunciations, checking the approach we're flying and noticing

whether or not it's a 2D or 3D approach within, without a real glide slope or glide path.

One small mistake or high workload would be enough to kill us, and that could happen

to anyone, regardless of knowledge, experience or number of hours of proficiency.

Not speculating, because we don't know what really happened to the pilot on this flight

and whether or not this was a lack of knowledge or simply an oversight.

Thank you again for what you do to further safety and aviation.

I've learned a lot from your shows.

Cheers, Chris.

And Chris, you're raising that tuning point.

Let me just kind of delve into that a little bit more.

What you're saying in essence is that pilots are not looking enough at the letters that

appear inside the HSI as they fly the approach, and I agree, I am guilty of that as well.

These letters really don't draw your attention as much as they should, and yet they're critical

to understanding what level of minimums have been approved for the approach that you're

flying.

For example, many approaches will have three different sets of minimums that you might

see.

Typically we see LPV, but it's possible we could also see LNAV slash VNAV or LNAV depending

upon the satellite signal quality.

And if you're not looking at that, and that would usually update right after the final

approach fix becomes active, which means you've just crossed the fix, proceeding it, that's

the time to look at the HSI and see, hey, what minimums did I get on this particular

approach?

And I'll talk to you in a future episode about the experience I had at Hayward, California

a few weeks ago, where I didn't get what you typically get on that particular approach.

Now, here's the email from Douglas Cole.

He says I've been listening now for several years, but episode 414, explaining the epidemic

crash at Steamboat, was a life saver in so many ways highlighting the subtle difference

in LPV versus plus V advisor Gladpath.

I'm a 50 year plus pilot with years of commercial steam gauge experience, still trying to learn

the intricacies of modern GPS navigation.

Despite having studied several of your books, these kinds of details I consider hidden gems.

The other episode was the why doesn't the glide path always capture?

That was very helpful.

Thank you.

Thanks so much Doug, and to everyone else who sent your emails, and for anyone who wants

to contact me, the best way to do that is just go out to aviationnewstar.com and then

click on contact at the top of the page.

And before we get to our main topic, let me throw out one other perspective on the epic

crash at Steamboat Springs, I've given it a lot of thought, and try to apply some of

the things I learned at USC when I was studying accident investigation and SMS or safety

management systems.

One of the first principles of safety is that all workers make mistakes, but they shouldn't

die or be injured because they make a mistake.

We should design systems that are robust enough to fail without killing someone.

Now, this approach we're being looked at by, say the safety committee on a factory or

an airline, someone would have identified the kind of problem that exists with the advisory

glide slope of the approach the pilot flew.

And that airline or that factory would have done something about it.

So yes, that approach may meet all of the rules for designing an instrument approach, but

those rules apparently don't consider that pilots are not savvy about advisory glide slopes

and that autopilots don't level off at the MDA when following an advisory glide slope.

Something that many pilots don't know or expect.

So yes, people knew this kind of problem existed with this particular approach, but apparently

no one jumped up and down and screamed enough to have that issue rectified.

And that's too bad, but it highlights a problem that we as GA pilots face when we fly

for ourselves.

We don't have a safety committee that's looking out for us, helping to identify hazards,

working to rectify them and communicating those issues to us.

And that's one of the reasons that general aviation has an excellent rate that's much

worse than the airlines.

And as you think about potential fixes, what comes to mind?

Well, couldn't we design a autopilot that levels off at the MDA when it's following an advisory

glide slope?

Yeah, I certainly would think so.

So let's get the FAA, the manufacturers, and everyone on board to fix these kinds of

problems so that we don't have pilots dying simply because they make a mistake.

And now let's get to our main topic.

First, if you're interested in what's happening in virtual reality simulators, which is a little

different than what we'll be talking about today, I encourage you to check out episode

124 of the Rotary Wing Show.

In that episode, which I just released, I talked with a founder of loft dynamics.

They have the only certified VR simulators in the world, and I've flown one of them,

and it's amazing.

Now, they started with helicopter simulators, but they are also working with Alaska Airlines

to create a virtual reality simulator for an airliner.

So check out that episode by searching in your podcast app for Rotary Wing Show, and

I'll include a link in the show notes.

Now let's talk about Redbird.

First, I love factory tours, and over the years, I've been lucky enough to have taken

tours first at Piper way back, I think, in the 1980s, then Columbia, and then Cessna,

and then Sirus, and even Continental Engines, that was a great tour.

I've also toured, get this, a latter factory, in Bath, New York, and I learned about that

last one through a book that I used to have that listed over 100 different factory tours

in the US.

But let's get on and talk about Redbird.

Let me tell you first a little about Josh Harnacle.

Josh is the chief operating officer at Redbird Flight, where he runs the day-to-day operations

and helps make sure Redbird is building products and experiences that actually matter to pilots

and flight training organizations.

Before stepping into the COO role, Josh led the sales marketing customer support and customer

success teams.

He's a CFI and third generation pilot, and now here's our conversation with Josh Harnacle.

Josh, welcome to the show, so great to be here at your facility.

No, thanks for having me.

I've been a fan and have read your books and listened to your podcast for a long time.

Well, this is just kind of a fun opportunistic moment.

I had a flight to Austin, and you very graciously and sure noticed agreed to host me here at

your factory.

Let's start a little bit about the origin of Redbird.

When I walked into the lobby, I saw some intriguing photographs on the wall.

Tell us about the beginning.

So in 2006, 2007 timeframe, our founder was doing some sim training at a big sim company

for his king air, and the experience was not great.

The sim was not great, but the company said it was a multi-million dollar sim, and he

had just retired from Dell and said, I could probably build something for less than that.

So they got together and started working on building a sim.

That was sort of the start of it, and they started with assessment cardinal from a junkyard

outside of Dallas.

They grabbed the, brought the fuselage down and tried to build the sim inside of the

fuselage of an airplane.

That's the name of the company who's Redbird for the cardinal, but unfortunately, the sim

doesn't really work very well inside of it old fuselage.

We've got to build the box ourselves now.

And tell me, what's the issue?

I would imagine most people think, hey, that would be the perfect vehicle for a sim.

Why does an old fuselage not work well as a simulator?

Well, if you're only going to build one simulator, it probably works okay.

If you're going to build more than one and try to sell it and support it and sort of

standardize around it and make a business out of it, the variation between fuselages,

the ability to acquire them, the customizations you're going to have to make over the course

of your product is going to make it pretty unsustainable.

But for one, you just want one, it's probably works okay.

I understand.

So it's just not very repeatable and you need repeatability in the business.

That's great.

Well, tell us a little bit about the different kinds of products that you currently have and

also the markets that you're addressing with them.

Okay.

So we have a range of simulators, simulation devices that are sort of small desktop units

that an individual pilot or school could acquire up through larger devices that have

motion and move.

We tend to hit the kind of entry range in GA.

So your systems and piper's and beach crafts and that kind of stuff, single light piston,

some light twin pistons, and then we go into the turbo prop and light jet world.

So we'll have king ears, system mustangs, CJ, but that's really where we top out is sort

of the light jet world and we have everything from, like I said, small desktops that started

around for $5,000 up through large units for like a CJ or a Mustang that might be $250,000.

And I remember some of the early simulators that I saw and they included motion and I think

that's what distinguished initially this company from many other type simulator companies.

Tell me how motion plays a role today and roughly what percentage of the simulators

that you ship include motion?

Yeah, so probably 70% of the larger units that we ship, where motion is an option, ship

with motion, overall volume, though we send, we ship a lot of small units that motion

is not even an option.

And I think it's particularly useful in situations where you are training brand new pilots that

have no experience, it's a competitive advantage for some schools as well to be able to offer

motion to their customers.

So I think between those two things that from a training perspective, I think certainly

pilots that don't have a lot of in cockpit experience, it will be beneficial for them,

it'll help with the disorientation, that kind of thing, and preparing them for that.

You're 10,000 hour airline pilot, probably doesn't need it, but some people like it.

Let's talk about the low end, the kind of simulators that an individual might purchase.

Tell me about the product names, the type of avionics they represent, and again, roughly

the ballpark cost of each of those.

So we start with a product called the J, which is basically a pre-configured PC-based simulation.

It's going to have generic throttle, generic, you know, a couple of switches, and that's

going to start at, I think, about $3,000, and then we have an updated version of that

that's got better graphics, and it all comes with the software installed on it.

So you don't have to buy software, you don't have to buy a yoke, you don't have to do

any, you know, you just take it out of the box, plug it in, and it works.

The J's and the J velocity are not FAA-approved devices, those are just a computer, right?

And they're very popular with K-12 programs, high schools and middle schools have, over

the last 10 years, honestly, through the awesome work that AOPA has done on the high school

education program, the high school STEM curriculum.

It's been come very popular in those environments, and we've certainly benefited from it, and

we saw a lot of J's.

And then up from that, sort of what you, I would recommend, like what I would have at what

I have at home as a pilot, would be a TD, which is a tabletop design simulator, and there's

two versions of TD and a TD-2, which the TD-2 is just a complex, you know, has a propellant

prop knob and gear knob.

And then avionics wise, we'll have, for both of those, you have a G1000 or a 435, 30 currently.

And then the TD and the TD-2, what's the rough ballpark cost on those?

So the TD and TD-2 are right about $10,000, once you get it installed and everything.

And those RFA-approved, those are basic aviation training devices.

You can log your instrument currency in them without an instructor present.

It's, yeah, can be quite beneficial.

The whole, especially, always gets me.

So I have to do a hold every six months, and I always end up doing it in the SIM.

Yeah, that's true.

We don't get too much holding in the real world.

So the TDs, what flight similar category do those fall into for the FAA, are these AATDs?

Yes, they are, they are ATDs, so aviation training device, basic.

So BATD is the technical term, and then our larger SIMs, the motion ones are AATDs, advanced

aviation training devices.

And so for the TD, which is under the basic category, how many hours could you log toward

an instrument rating in those?

For an instrument rating, it's 10 hours towards the, and none for the private, but 10 for

the instrument, and I think maybe 20 for the commercial or something, you have to look.

But instrument currency is honestly a big, big point on those for sure, and we have lots

of folks that buy them for that.

And the shoot and approach on the SIM before they go do it in the airplane as a general

rule.

And the approach is that I haven't flown before.

Yeah, that's a great way to go.

Every year when I have to go back for my annual recurrent training in the vision jet,

I always go into just a local AATD simulator, which is to have somewhat generic, but I

find it's really useful just to get in there and kind of remember some of the funny little

gotchas that you find in the instrument world.

Well, talk a little bit about gift.

What is that?

And how does that play into all your products?

The gift is guided independent flight training.

It's a collection of software and lessons, pre-programmed content lessons that take you through

private pilot and instrument rating with two courses, private and instrument, that are

maneuvers based.

So it's not knowledge, material, right?

It's not going to prepare you to take the written exam, but it will prepare you to fly

the airplane.

And so on, you know, private pilot, it'll be steep turns in slow flight and all that.

And the instrument, it'll be the different types of approaches.

And what happens is there's a video that you watch and then there's an instructor, a voice

instructor, based instructor in the sim that is watching how you're flying and will

provide guidance.

So if you'll love it, it'll tell you to pull up, if you're fast, you'll say, you know,

reduce power, whatever is appropriate given the situation.

And then it grades your performance to the ACS standards.

So at the end of the flight, you'll get a score based on ACS, whether you passed or failed.

And it's quite strict.

And like a DPE who's a human and will be like, hey, you are correcting.

It's fine.

You went 102 feet.

Gift does not do that.

Gift says you were 102 feet off of your altitude, you're failed.

The idea is that you can gamify your training and make it highly repeatable.

So you get lots of reps doing specific maneuvers and hopefully add a lower cost than doing

it in the airplane, obviously, and get towards your certificate quicker.

And it sounds like there's no instructor involved.

This is all self-paced and so on.

Where does that play a role in your mind in the total instructional process and who would

benefit from using this and at what point in their training?

That's a great question.

So gift is in use and a number of flights goes around the country right now.

And it is primarily the way it's used is as the practice and repetition step in learning.

So the maneuver or task we introduce by an instructor, a human will teach another

human.

That's probably the only way we're going to learn this stuff.

And then they'll maybe demonstrate it and you go through those sort of fundamental instruction

that you're supposed to do.

And then they will say, okay, fly this maneuver.

Let's say Steve turns until you get a passing score.

And they can go off with another student.

That instructor can go off with another student or go get lunch or whatever.

And the learner will be in an environment that's controlled.

They're not going to be able to just goof around in the sim.

Right?

That's one of the main things that GIF does is it sort of puts a box around the world.

And if you start doing stuff that isn't effective learning, the mission, the flight resets.

Which is one of the issues that we can have in some of these environments is where they

just start playing around in the sim.

And so GIF sort of puts some guardrails on it and drives them to getting to a level of

performance that would translate to the airplane.

And so it would be pre, maybe they introduced it in the sim, maybe they demonstrated it in

the airplane once, do some practice, and then demonstrate it to mastery of proficiency

in the airplane.

The other place it's really useful is, especially in private pilot training, we kind of do this

thing where we touch on a bunch of maneuvers that are required pre-solo and then everybody

solos and then we go right in across country.

And we have this gap where we don't actually do any maneuver-based stuff until the end when

we're getting ready for the check ride.

And then you're like, oh, man, I haven't had a steep turn in two months, I've been flying

across countries.

If you use GIFs, you can allow that sort of maneuvers-based stuff to stay fresher in the

background while you're doing different in your cross-country phases and going through

that part of the training.

They can hop in this sim for 20 minutes before or after a lesson and get some exposure

without the instructor necessarily being there.

Yeah, I'm guessing that in the scenario, a lot of this isn't necessarily logable, but

it helps just build proficiency.

What about pre-check ride kinds of things?

Would this be useful for someone to just kind of see how ready they are for a check ride?

Yeah, it certainly would be useful.

I think we have some schools that use GIFs as part of stage checks, so they get objective

scoring on certain tasks that they use as part of their stage check process in like a

41 environment, and certainly is useful for that.

And yes, to your point, it is not logable, but your average student is spanking and taking

70-some lot hours to get a private pilot, even in part 141, highly structured training

environment.

And so if you put 30 of those hours in a sim at half the cost, it makes a big difference.

Yeah, it sounds like a great way to get proficient at a lower cost.

Now one of the things I remember that I thought was interesting and different about your products

was remote instruction.

Talk about that.

What are some of the benefits of that, and then later tell me about some of the issues

around that?

So yes, we have a product and a set of tools that will allow a student to sit in a simulator

and an instructor to interact with that simulation from not there.

So they could be across the world and connect to it via internet, and they started Zoom

call or whatever to be able to see and speak to the student, and then they can remotely

log into their sim and start flights and inflites and change the weather and go through

that whole process.

And there are programs that are starting to take advantage of this.

A lot of individual pilots that might have a sim at home will fly within instructor that

they'll prefer or that they like through this, through a program like that.

The issues that have come up really are what's logable as training in that environment.

You know, unfortunately, a lot of the FAA work is based on precedent, and so let's say

your A&P mechanic, you're doing training for an A&P, you know, like you're logging

hours for your A&P, this has come up quite a bit of, you need to be supervised.

Does that mean the guy has to be present with you physically, or can he supervise you

from another hanger, and you call him if you have a problem?

And then this is still kind of an open question on the instructional like CFI side, as

well as the other issue is if you could connect to multiple sims at the same time as an

instructor, I could have four students.

Can I provide instruction to four individual people at the same time?

Is that allowed?

I don't know that we have that good answer for those questions at this point.

And so the student would be in the physical simulator.

What kind of equipment would the instructor need at their end to be able to interact with

a student?

There's still laptop, computer, I would suggest a pretty big monitor because you will,

you basically get a PFD on the instructor's side so they can sort of see the situational

awareness of the airplane, and then they'll have a control panel when they're able to

interact with the weather and failures and that kind of thing.

But there's no camera, they don't get to see the expression on.

Certainly you use the camera, yeah, so we, that is supported as well, yeah, you can

have a camera.

I think it actually is quite helpful to, I'm an instructor, I think one of the issues

you would run into is if you don't have a camera, it's hard to read the body language

and see the eyes and all that and then think that's a big part of it.

Yeah, that was exactly what I was thinking is we learned so much by looking at the student

or client and you know, we get feedback from their expressions and kind of figure out,

oh, okay, we've tasked saturated this person or this person is frustrated, we need to explain

it a little differently or things like that.

That's great.

Talk a little bit about software emulation.

How do you go about doing that and talk about that?

So avionics is a huge part of simulation period and avionics tend to be quite expensive.

So to be able to offer simulation at a cost that is not egregious where we have to come

up with a way to provide at least some level of fidelity through emulation and that's kind

of really, if you think two or three foundational design principles of Redbird for the last

17 years, that's one of them is that we're emulating avionics particularly garment avionics

but they're not alone, like avidine and everybody else.

And so you're emulating it to essentially provide it at a lower cost?

Yes, it's 100% about cost.

If hardware cost is like a G1000 unit even without the software is still quite expensive

more than the simulation cost for a lot of our simulators.

And then the licensing fees on the avionics themselves.

And a thing we have learned over the years is avionics licensing is extremely complex.

Garmin doesn't necessarily own the license on everything if it was made for a Cessna

product, Cessna has some IP as well if it was made for a beach track.

So it gets very complicated and so it's not as easy as, oh, we're going to just give

us the software and we'll run it on our own hardware.

Like no, it gets quite sticky quite quickly.

So really the way the path is emulating form function to be able to provide tools that

people can train with.

And so do you have your own engineers in house who are looking at the Garmin product and trying

to figure it out and understand it and recreate it or to use outside the contractors, how

does that work?

Both.

Both.

So yeah, we have in house engineers as well as outside vendors.

So tell us how simulation has changed over the years.

What have you seen change during your time working with Redbird?

Yeah.

So I was a flight instructor before I started at Redbird and in the 16 years I've been

here, the main change is the simulation, the use of simulation and training is way

more frequent and accessible.

There's more sims out in the world.

They're used earlier in training and they're used more often for sure.

And looking ahead to the future, what kinds of things are you starting to explore and

where do you think simulation is headed?

So there's really kind of two path, well, many more than two.

But there's a lot of technology that has been developed or being developed that will make

its way into GA simulation over the next few years.

Really it's around number one, high fidelity devices are going to become way more common.

So your average flight school right now might have a Redbird or might have a competitive

product that is sort of maybe an 80% stand in.

In five years, that may be more like a 90, 100%, 95% stand in for a specific aircraft

type.

It just becomes more affordable to do that kind of work because of technology.

And then mixed reality is coming, is usable.

There's still some challenges around implementation, but it's interesting for sure.

So tell us a little bit more what is mixed reality, how does that comparative virtual reality?

So mixed reality takes a virtual world and then a video feed of the real world and overlays

them.

And typically in flight training, what we would do is use the virtual world for the exterior

and then use a video feed of the real world for the controls inside the cockpit.

One of the challenges with virtual reality is that if the whole world is virtual, you can't

see your hands.

You can't interact with the cockpit, you can't interact with the avionics.

So mixed reality kind of bridges that gap.

Well, what's really interesting to me is your offices, both engineering and manufacturing,

they're all together here in this facility.

And I love factories.

My first job when I worked for Hula Packard was in a factory, though I worked on the marketing

side.

And factories are just fascinating.

Would you be willing to take me on a tour and talk us through what you have here?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's kind of a passive line in the last six months as well, so.

Okay, great.

Well, let's go ahead and start walking around and you can tell us what goes on here.

All right.

So we've just left the conference room.

I see lots of cupcakes here.

Yeah, it's Valentine's Day is in this weekend, so then we're having the company Valentine's

party at lunch today.

We're welcome to stay.

I've come on the correct day, obviously.

So where are we going to start?

So we're going to start on the kind of end-of-back end when a product goes out the door when it's

been finished and tested.

So we have a whole system designed to around quality.

We're not shipping products that's defective or has issues, and that's been a major push

over the last several years.

Yeah, in fact, I saw a sign at one point we're walking around that talked about the final

inspection or the next inspection is being done by the customer.

So I guess that's a focus on quality right there.

Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

It is definitely a focus and has one of the things we've instituted over the last

several months, a 5S process, which is really around keeping things organized, all designed

for quality.

Great.

So what are we walking into now?

So this is our finished goods outbound shipping area.

So we have everything from large crates and pallets full of steel for the motion platforms

through parcel boxes and you can go through UPS to an individual customer.

We've got a big wooden crate here, what's in it, and where's it going?

So this is a Piper Meridian simulation that's going to a company called Safe Pilot.

I think this one is actually going into Houston, in severe Houston or Charleston.

And this is one of two that will be going in the next couple of months.

And the crate actually stands a little taller than I do, it looks like it's about six and

a half feet tall and probably at least six feet width and several feet deep.

This is actually just one of several crates for this particular simulator?

Yeah, so they'll probably ship four crates total and then one large 12 foot by 16 foot

pallet.

And where are we headed now?

We'll walk over to the assembly area, which is where we do our mechanical and electrical

assembly of components that are either peripherals, so yokes, throttles, that kind of thing, or our

desktop simulations.

We have a team of 10 folks that work here in Austin that do the assembly on all of our

products.

And then they do a good job and we build it with their design and built in a way where

we can try to get basically one person, one unit out in a day.

Okay, so I see a gentleman working on, it looks like a J and there's what, someone over

here has got a TD.

Yes, yes, so we'll have a J, a TD, there's also a dual rudder for a large sim and that

all gets done in here.

And we've moved to a single piece flow system, so instead of we used to do batches, but

and towards that quality issue, we've moved back to single piece flow, so then build things,

start to finish one unit at a time.

And is it for these small units, is it primarily one person that's responsible for the

entire unit?

So for each assembly inside of that unit, there is one person.

So Todd here is working on the final assembly on a J. There are several sub assemblies that

go into that, those may have been built by somebody else, you know, earlier this week.

Got it.

So this is the final assembly wire and test bringing all the components together?

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

Okay, very good.

All right, so where are we headed now?

So now we're walking over to our fabrication area, which is where we do any raw material,

sheet metal, plywood, tube steel gets transformed and turned into something else.

So we do about 25% of our fabrication is done in house currently, we're sort of in process

of bringing more and more of that in house from them.

We've reached the point where we have some economies of scale where it makes some sense

to do that.

You know, for example, we do all of our own fabrication of the shells in house, we use

a honeycomb aluminum sheets that are cut and then bent, more one of the only few companies

that really uses this material, but what it enables us to do is make a shell for a simulation

that has no internal structure.

It's a monococ fuselage essentially and so we can have the structures provided by the

shell itself.

Got it.

So this piece of aluminum we've seen in front of us is roughly, I don't know, five feet

square.

And I can see it's got two layers of aluminum, the upper and the lower and then we've

got the honeycomb in the center.

What are the some of the challenges with working with this kind of material?

Yeah, we've learned over the years that it can be a little touchy.

So the aluminum is glued in there and so like we get them powder coated, but we've had

to select one vendor that has an oven that's able to do it at a temperature that doesn't

melt the glue.

So it creates some challenges.

However, the material itself has got a lot of advantages.

It's used in airline, part 121, Boeing products for floors and walls.

They're all flat pieces that have no bend.

We bend it.

I think maybe one of the only ones that bend it.

That adds some complication, but it's worked well for us for the last several years.

Okay.

We just brought in some, this bandsaw actually, to do some cutting and we have a router

table, a computer controlled router and table where we're now able to do all of our own

switch panels in house.

So the face plate that goes on, you know, where the avionics live, right?

Because now we're able to do that all in house and we literally today just got a huge

flatbed printer to be able to print the labeling on those in house and made some good progress

so far.

Now where are we headed to?

So let's go over to the wire room and then to the PCB room.

Sounds good.

That earlier we walked through this area and we could hear saws running and things like

that.

Sounds like it's a little quieter though.

We've got a lot of loading docks here, trucks backing up.

Yes.

Yeah, this is the inbound receiving area where all of our inventory parts and materials

come in and it's, it's going to be quite busy.

And we've got really high ceilings here so I see goods which are stacked up, what,

15 feet high, well above us.

Yeah.

Yeah, and that's, if we expand one of the things we'll end up doing before we get

more square footage is racking to the ceiling because they make forklifts that will go up

to 38 feet.

So that's where we're kind of, if we need to add any more capacity over the next several

years, we're going to go vertical before we go.

Got it.

And it's pretty tall ceiling here.

Any idea how high that is?

I don't know.

No.

Yeah.

I'm guessing we're looking easily 30, 35 feet.

So a lot of vertical room to expand here.

One of the challenges given the number of products we have, the number of airplanes we

emulate, is that we end up carrying a bunch of demand or carrying a bunch of inventory.

So like we're, we have a pipeline meridian that we are going to probably end up shipping

two of this year, but it's been seven years since we shipped one before.

So some of the inventory is from seven years ago, but now we've added more.

And so we end up with a lot of stuff on the shelves for a long time, unfortunately.

Got it.

So tell me what we have here.

So these are frames for switch panels, for our large cins.

There have been manufactured in-house as well, using 80-20, which is an extruded aluminum

material that can be cut and bolted together to create.

It's actually marketed as an industrial erector set, and makes super flexible.

And then once the frames are built, it'll go into our wire room and we'll wire up.

And then our wire harnesses, power supplies, USB hubs, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

So what I'm looking at here is, looks like what is about six monitors, I guess, forming

a 180-degree semi-circle around where the pilot would sit, and then not tons more than

that.

So this is kind of a, looks like the very initial stage of assembly of a large simulator.

Yes, yes.

So this is where it starts, and then they'll add in all of the switches and knobs and

buttons.

There.

I'm curious.

How many simulators have you shipped over the years?

We're probably about 5,000 total.

If you include both the desktop units and the large sims, almost 2,000 large sims.

So it sounds like that's really the main focus, or at least the main revenue component is

the large sims?

Probably, it's been historically.

We've had a lot of success with the desktop units going into high schools and middle schools

over the last several years, so that's become a big chunk of our business.

Yeah.

It always changes.

Okay.

Sounds good.

So we've just walked by some folks, we're talking about the printer.

Tell us about that.

Yes.

It's a UV printer.

It's a printing technology that we've just sort of become, it's been around for a while,

but we've become aware of, and we've actually got the idea for it from the folks at Sporties,

and they're avionic shops that they had set up, and they're using a UV printer to do

the labeling for instrument panels for real airplanes, and after talking with them, it

was like, we should do that for us, because we historically got it screen printed.

When screen printing is not really the right technology for the level of the numbers that

we do, and so this uses, it's like a laser printer, it's like what you have at home,

basically, except the ink curers by UV light, very bright UV light, so we got a big one

a 10 by 6-1, and that's feet, right, that's a pretty large bed.

Yes, yeah, 10 by 6 feet, and they just literally arrived today, and we'll get it set up in

roomy next week.

All right, so where are we now?

So this is the wire room, wire assembly room, where we do more of our specific wiring

and soldering work for our larger sims, typically, both the instrument panels and the avionics

setup, as well as the motion control boxes, and the wiring associated with that.

Got it.

And a little quieter in here, too.

A little quieter in here, yeah.

Yeah, we don't have all the different saws and other machines in here, so.

In here, we do, this has all been brought in house, and we do all of our own wiring.

This was not always the case.

In the past, some of this work was contracted out, but now we do it all in house, and we'll

put in, you can see, build out wiring harnesses for the switch panel, circuit breakers, knobs,

buttons, et cetera, and then there's a number of power supplies and things that go onto

the shelves.

Yeah, so we have a lot of different things in the room here, but right now we're standing

in front of a gray panel, which is mounted vertically, which is how it would appear, and

it's probably what, about six feet wide, a couple feet high, a lot of cutouts, it looks

like the monitors are mounted, and then all kinds of switches have already been mounted

into it, all the labels are there as well, you know, what kind of simulator this is?

So this is going to be, this is an FMX, this is like our standard, most popular unit,

and so this is actually where the yoke goes, and that's the throttle.

Now I see one button on there that I'm guessing is not going to be in the actual airplane,

and that's the emergency button.

Yes.

Yes, we do have an emergency stop button, which would be handy in the airplane, but it's

not really effective.

Yeah, I understand.

So it's a very large red button, so I guess if people need to stop the simulator quickly,

they can usually push that particular button, and yeah, wouldn't that be nice if we could

do this?

Yeah, it would be great.

I would have put used to it at least once, so, where are we now?

This is the PCB room, or solder room, where we're putting the, the ladies are wiring,

or excuse me, soldering in transistors and resistors onto PCB board, you know, green computer

boards.

The boards are printed through a vendor, but then we do all of the assembly of the boards

in house.

Really where you get into having to carry a lot of inventory based on having to support

a lot of airplanes.

So we have a different board design for basically every airplane we've ever done.

And we'll typically keep several on stock, so if we need to do support work or replacement,

even for stuff we've only, we don't even sell anymore, we still keep them on stock.

Yeah, I would guess that it probably makes sense to not just buy one board at a time,

so you're probably buying a number of them even though you're only going to use a relatively

small number of them at that moment.

Yeah, I think 10 is about the minimum you're going to have to buy.

So yeah, it does, it ends up adding up over the years, you end up with a lot of excess

stuff.

Got it.

I understand, but at least you've got it on hand when you need it.

Yeah, for sure.

Yep, exactly.

All right, so where are we now?

So this is our completions and testing room for the large sims.

So all of our QA functions run out of this space, and we have sims units that are being

shipped over the next month or so.

After they get finished in the wire room, they come in here, we connect the yolks and

throttles and avionics panels and do some configuration work, make sure everything is set

up correctly, and then they'll do testing.

They also, the team that's based here also does the QA for the desktops and the peripheral

units.

But the sims themselves don't come in this room very much.

The smaller units are usually Q8 online.

Yep, so I've got a number of big units here.

In fact, I see some interesting, it looks like aluminum hose.

Is that cooling?

What does that do?

Yeah, that's cooling.

It's a dryer ducting hooked up to a build fan from a boat and it connects to the, there's

a hole in the floor of our large sims and it sucks air up, and it goes through that

into a little eyeball vents on the, underneath the monitors on the inside the sim.

Now, is that to provide cooling for the monitors or cooling for the pilot?

Cooling for the pilot, actually, yeah, and yeah, it's supposed to, and like so if we operate

our sims a lot, and honestly places that they shouldn't really operate, like Oshkosh

Wisconsin in the middle of July, outside, and so we have quite a bit of experience with

it, but we'll hook up, poor will AC units to that, and you actually get some air conditioning

into the sim through the airflow system.

Wow, that's amazing, I guess I hadn't realized that, so the pilots need to stay cool, and

so you've got that cooling built into the sim?

Yes, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, let's head back to engineering.

Okay, sounds good.

So we have about 85 employees total, and the majority of them work here, and here in

our facility in Kyle, and we have a full complement of engineering teams, so I think there's probably

about 20 people total that do some form of engineering.

We have software development, as well as mechanical and electrical engineering as well.

Okay, now this looks a lot more like traditional office space with the cubicles and nice lighting

and rugs on the floor, and so this is very different than the shop floor environment.

Yes, it is, but one of the things we've always done is have the office and the shop co-located.

We think it's actually really important to enable faster design and development, as well

as making sure that the feedback from the shop flows back into engineering, and we can

design and build products that are as best as possible.

Yeah, it took us all of 30 seconds to get from the shop floor area to the engineering area,

so yeah, I can see that it makes it very easy for people to communicate with each other

and make sure that they're figuring out what changes they need to make and how things

actually work and so on, so yeah, I can see titles of folks here, systems, engineer, mechanical

designer, and things like that.

Well, Josh, thanks so much for your time today.

Tell me if people want to find more about Redbird, where are they going on the web to do that?

Thanks, Max.

So the website is www.redbirdflight.com, or you can shoot an email to info at redbirdflight.com

as well.

And I'm guessing you can be seen at some of the major shows, Oshkosh Air Venture, and

also what Sun and Flynn perhaps.

Yep, we'll be at Sun and Flynn and Air Venture and maybe a few small ones in between.

And my thanks to Josh Harnagall for joining us here today.

You can find out more about Redbird at redbirdflight.com.

And just a reminder that I love hearing from you, and I read many of your emails on the

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So until next time, fly safely.

Have fun and keep the blue side up.

And remember that you can always go around.

You can always go around, if it don't look right, coming down, don't wait until you're

on a silent baby slide and up side down.

You can always go around.