12 mars 2019 | Local, Aérospatial
by Lisa Gordon
The Viking CL-415 “SuperScooper” is more akin to a pick-up truck than a sports car.
It's a hardworking, amphibious turboprop that was built to fight wildfires.
It flies low, battling blistering heat and blinding smoke, before releasing 13,500 pounds of water in six seconds – and then returning to a nearby lake where it skims the surface to reload.
Introduced in 1993 by Bombardier, the CL-415 was essentially a turboprop version of its predecessor, the piston-powered CL-215. Today, there are close to 170 CL-215/415 aircraft in operation, mostly in Europe and North America. They are now supported by Viking Air, which acquired the program from Bombardier in 2016.
Pilot training in the CL-415 has historically been done in the aircraft, but TRU Simulation + Training says that due to the unique mission it performs, those training flights can be dangerous.
The South Carolina-headquartered company is a division of industry giant Textron Inc., and was formed following the amalgamation of several specialty flight simulation and pilot training companies, including former Montreal-based Mechtronix.
About two years ago, TRU's commercial aviation division in Montreal began designing the world's first CL-415 full flight simulator (FFS) with the capability to replicate operations not only in the air, but also on the water. The company was able to draw on its recent experience of successfully building a Series 400 Twin Otter FFS for Canada's Pacific Sky Aviation in Calgary, Alta. – the world's first seaplane simulator with water-handling capabilities.
“Before the Twin Otter project, hydrodynamic modelling is something we hadn't done before,” acknowledged Thom Allen, TRU's vice-president of Technology and Innovation. “It's like a boat simulator because you're modelling the buoyancy of the floats or the fuselage in the water. Interestingly, our engineers working on the Twin Otter program actually went to the library and researched how boats work on the water. Mixing the boat sim with the aerodynamic sim is the whole package.”
He said the CL-415 experience took things one step further by adding the mission component – scooping the water – to the Twin Otter build.
“From a safety point of view, the types of missions you do in a waterbomber are quite a bit different from a commercial aircraft. When you're scooping water and dropping it over a fire, training in those conditions is very dangerous. The tradeoff has always been between the quality of the training and the danger of doing that sort of training.”
TRU's CL-415 FFS was delivered to Ansett Aviation Training in Milan, Italy, in September 2018 and certified by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in December to Level D standards. Although training courses have yet to be completed in the simulator, the hope is that both initial and recurrent pilot training will be done exclusively in the device.
Allen said the operational characteristics of a CL-415 are complex and unique.
“When you're flying over a very hot fire, you drop your water and the mass of the aircraft is cut in half. The turbulence effect is quite significant when you hit the updraft. The fire is creating turbulence, smoke, reduced visibility – and pilots are dropping every five or 10 minutes repeatedly, usually in rugged terrain at low altitudes. This is the part that made this project something new.”
To gather accurate performance data, TRU rented a CL-415 and equipped it with flight test instrumentation.
“We weren't doing fire drops with our engineers on board, but we did all the manoeuvres around that, and we brought in a number of senior CL-415 pilots to evaluate our work.”
The result is the world's first high fidelity CL-415 simulator with the capability of replicating not just air and water operations, but various types and intensities of forest fires and changes in related environmental conditions. The cockpit noise level is accurately reproduced by a secondary audio system that – like the real aircraft – requires crewmembers to wear a noise-cancelling headset.
Full article: https://www.skiesmag.com/news/simulating-the-superscooper
29 novembre 2021 | Local, Aérospatial
Assailli sur de nombreux fronts commerciaux durant le règne chaotique de Donald Trump, le Canada continue d’être malmené par l’administration Biden et menace maintenant de riposter aux subventions pour l’achat de véhicules électriques américains et aux nouveaux droits compensateurs sur le bois d’œuvre canadien. Même Boeing semble être devenu la nouvelle proie de l’implacable Hulk commercial qu’est devenu le Canada.
7 novembre 2019 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
CAE has announced the appointment of France Hébert to the position of vice-president, Defence and Security for the Canada region. Hébert will be taking on the position on Nov. 4, 2019 and she will report to Marc-Olivier Sabourin, vice-president, Defence and Security, CAE International. Hébert will lead the Defence and Security (D&S) business in Canada, shaping the vision and the operational and commercial strategy for the division, which includes 14 sites across the country. She will strategically position CAE to win large-scale procurement opportunities and continue to protect and maintain our leading position in the military training systems and solutions in Canada with our current programs. As an influential leader, she will be CAE's representative for D&S Canada with the federal Government and Canadian stakeholders. Over the course of her career, Hébert has held senior positions in strategy, business development and operations. She brings extensive leadership experience with a proven track record on complex, billion-dollar defence and aerospace programs. Through her varied career, she was an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces and worked for three companies playing major roles in Canada, namely: Bombardier, Nortel and General Dynamics Mission Systems – Canada (GDMS-C). Since 2017, Hébert was head of the land C4ISR business area for General Dynamics Mission Systems Canada, Ottawa. She was fully accountable for the line of business including all aspects of execution, operations and finance of the Canadian division. CAE is certain that Hébert's vast experience, knowledge and versatility will greatly contribute to the success of the Canada region. CAE would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank Joe Armstrong, who continued to lead the Canada region along with his current role as vice-president, Business Operations while we were recruiting for the position. https://www.skiesmag.com/press-releases/france-hebert-appointed-vp-of-defence-and-security-for-cae-canada/
20 novembre 2017 | Local, Aérospatial, C4ISR
FORT COLLINS, Colorado/VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Remote GeoSystems, North Shore Rescue and Talon Helicopters are pleased to announce the successful deployment of a geoDVR™ Gen2 with a FLIR daylight EO/IR gyro-stabilized video camera on an Airbus TwinStar (AS355) for Search and Rescue (SAR) missions. The geoDVR Gen2 is an advanced mil-spec DVR for recording multiple channels of HD & Standard-Definition geospatial full motion video in airborne and rugged vehicle environments. The geoDVR's ability to reliably record HD color and IR, along with continuous GPS data and Live Moving Maps, makes it ideally suited for professional airborne search & rescue, law enforcement and infrastructure inspection applications that utilize multi-sensor gimbal video cameras. “Remote Geo has a reputation for building one of the industry's most dependable and user-friendly airborne geospatial video recorders, complete with flexible post-flight mapping tools. So the geoDVR Gen2 was an obvious choice when we were asked to fly the FLIR on the TwinStar for mountain search and rescue,” says Peter Murray, Founder/Operations Manager at Talon Helicopters. North Shore Rescue and Talon Helicopters team operate the geoDVR and FLIR during ground training in October 2017 “Adding the FLIR camera to North Shore Rescue's toolbox has been a great enhancement to NSR's capabilities. Having the ability to record and geo-track the location of the video seemed essential to maximizing the full potential of the FLIR camera. The geoDVR allows searchers to review recorded video for clues that may or may not have been observed during the flight,” says Jim Loree, North Shore Rescue SAR Manager and Air Operations Coordinator. According to Loree, “This feature could also be highly valuable in a large-scale disaster such as an earthquake where widespread areas are surveyed for damage. Emergency Operation Centers would be able to use the data to help them make decisions on where and how to deploy resources based on the exact location and extent of damages provided by the video recording.” North Shore Rescue and Talon Helicopters will use the geoDVR with a FLIR generously donated by Port of Vancouver to perform helicopter-based SAR operations with color and infrared. Then, using LineVision™ software post-flight, North Shore Rescue will review the geoDVR videos and flight tracks overlaid on Google Earth and Esri maps for training mission planning and recovery operations. Since North Shore Rescue is an all volunteer organization, Remote GeoSystems donated 18 LineVision Esri Maps and LineVision Google Earth licenses as part of the implementation. ### About North Shore Rescue North Shore Rescue (North Shore Search and Rescue) is a volunteer community-based Mountain Search and Rescue Team based in Vancouver, BC and performs approximately 130 rescue calls a year. The team consists of approximately 45 volunteers skilled in search and rescue operations in mountain, canyon and urban settings. The team has existed for 50 years, making it one of the oldest SAR teams in Canada. During this time the number of calls each year has gradually increased. Over the past 50 years the team has been involved in more than 2500 search and rescue operations volunteering over 200,000 hours of effort. These calls have involved over 2000 subjects, and approximately 25% of the calls have involved subject injuries or death. Learn more by visiting http://www.northshorerescue.com/ About Talon Helicopters Talon is Vancouver's number one supplier of helicopter services, and the region's largest supplier of intermediate helicopters. Talon is locally owned and operated, and provides exceptional customer service with 20 years of incident and accident free operations. Specialized mission services include search & rescue, broadcast and film, wildfire suppression and utility patrols/operations. Learn more by visiting http://www.taloncopters.com/ https://www.remotegeo.com/north-shore-rescue-talon-helicopters-geodvr-flir-sar/