As part of its mission to attract more people, young and old, into aviation, our chapter launched a project to build a series of increasingly capable flight simulators for use within the chapter’s hangar and at events such as Young Eagle rallies and Airport Fun Days.

The project was the brainchild of one of our student members, Anthony Moreno (age 14) and he in turn invited friends Kevin and Hannah Treehan from his school and his younger brother Luc to the “Sim Team”. Our vision is eventually to create a full motion simulator, for which as a first step we need a mobile simulator pod on a platform.

We found a well designed set of instructions for building a sim pod online at http://www.diyflightsims.com/ and scheduled a series of workshop days for our four person team (ages 11 through 16) under the guidance of Tech Counselor Dan Masys. As shown in these photos, the build team started with an inner frame of PVC pipe and wooden supports, and progressed through creating the outer shell, pod walls composed of Styrofoam insulation, painting the structure, and installing computer equipment and simulator controls.

A 4 x 6 ft. rolling platform on locking casters made the pod and its contents portable.

The Whelan family donated a large screen HDTV and Darren Coomler donated the flight simulator controls. Roger Edwards of Yuba Sutter Aviation generously donated a pilot seat from a Beech King Air to complete the cockpit environment.

Three of our four team members are Young Eagles and EAA student members, and each has donated 30 hours of their time to the project. And their enthusiasm and interest in aviation has grown steadily along the way.

The completed pod is now operational and stored in the EAA hangar.