Modern Tech, Vintage Iron: The N3N Flight sim overview; Winged Victory Ep 30

In this special episode Rob shows off a unique attraction at The National Museum of WWII Aviation in Colorado Springs, CO., the N3N simulator.  From its origins as a training plane in WWII to its current, more modern iteration of an introduction to flight for young and old alike!

#warbirds #museum #flying  #ww2 #airplane    #podcast  #planes  #history #aviation  #newbeginnings    #nationalmuseumofwwiiaviation #simulator #n3n


If you would like to support the museum and "Keep 'em flying!" please consider donating to The National Museum of WWII Aviation in Colorado Springs CO. Website: Worldwariiaviation.org

You can support the National Museum of World War II Aviation just by shopping at any Kroger store, King Soopers or City Market in Colorado, or at any other Kroger brand such as Ralphs, Fry's, Fred Meyer, Smith’s, Food 4 Less, or Harris Teeter!

To support the museum, shop online or at your local store, swipe your Loyalty Card, and funds will be donated to the museum at no added cost to you.

Sign up today to transform your everyday shopping into museum support:

1) Visit https://www.kingsoopers.com/signin or https://www.citymarket.com/signin
2) Sign in if you have an account, or click “Create an Account” and enter your name, email, and password. If you have an existing loyalty card, enter your card number or “Alt ID” (usually a phone number)
3) Once logged in, go to the user icon toward the top right corner of the window. From the drop-down menu, click “My Account”
4) Scroll the menu options and select “View Community Rewards”
5) When prompted to “Find an Organization,” use the search bar to look up "National Museum of World War II Aviation" or "BH543."
6) When the "National Museum of World War II Aviation" option appears, click “Enroll."

It's that easy!
 
Please do not hesitate to call the museum at 719.637.7559 if you need any help linking your shopper's card.

Thank you for taking the time to register and support the museum! Help us keep them flying.

Watch this episode on YouTube at @nationalWWIIaviation

Get your tickets now for the Pikes Peak Regional Airshow here in Colorado Springs, CO. at  PPRAirshow.org

We would like to thank Concordebattery.com for their amazing support throughout the years!  If you own a plane you should really consider having one of their batteries in it.  They are worth every penny for the ease and piece of mind they

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello, welcome to a special edition of Winged Victory with Rob, me. Scott's off galavanning somewhere. Uh hopefully we'll uh we'll see him, but he's having fun. I'm here in our interactive display uh room. There are a lot of cool things here. We're just gonna focus on one for the time being, and that's our flight simulator, which is housed inside an actual N3N biplane trainer used in the war to train folks to fly. We trained a hundred thousand people to fly during World War II. 17, or not 17, some some 20, 21, 22, perhaps hadn't even been driving cars. And this is an actual uh government-built airplane. The stearmans and the PT-19s, PT-22s were built by civilian companies, but this aircraft was built by the Naval Aircraft Factory. We've got the uh the engine that goes into the plane on display in front of it, but the really cool things are around the back. So this aircraft came to us after having served as a crop duster once it retired from the military. And there are several unique features that you can see. This is why we left the skin off the airplane. Unlike most of the rest of the trainers, which are at least partially wood framed, this airplane is entirely framed in metal. And that's partially because the Naval Aircraft Factory built rigid airships before this, and they had a lot of these sturdy ribs left over. No point in wasting anything. These airplanes served until the 60s. It's the last biplane in U.S. service. They finally retired them from the U.S. Naval Academy, where they flew on floats. The several of the N3Ns around the country have full float capability. It's a sturdy aircraft. That's one of the reasons it was in such demand as a crop duster. Now, this particular aircraft came to us a courtesy of, among other people, the Eisenhower family, who's who had a marine naval aviator amongst their family. But you can see, again, it's a sturdy airplane. And we'll get into some of the simulation part here in a moment, but you can just appreciate that it would really take a lot of abuse to bend this airplane. It's a real pleasure when you uh see some 10-year-old's eyes light up and they get the thrill of flying. But uh we found a guest pilot for just a moment. He's actually not out gallivanting just yet. So it really is a Rob and Scott. Hello. We're flying this speedster biplane because it's got much better performance than the N3N. Although, yeah, we need a little more back stick on our uh aileron rolls there. Just a little bit. Youngin'. Yes, sir. We do have an actual N3N scenario where we use uh Johnson Reservoir and the airplane is on floats because the last one of these in active service was a float plane at the Academy, at the Naval Academy. This uh this gives us a little more performance, more options. The N3N was not an acrobatic airplane, and uh and the speedster certainly is. So you can see we're flying over Colorado Springs, but other scenarios, and I'll show you a couple of those, we can actually take this airplane off from a carrier flight deck in San Diego, and we'll uh smoothest flight I've ever made in Colorado Springs, I can tell you that. No bumps. No bumps. One of the coolest things about this simulator is the mechanical control surfaces are actually reflected on the computer screen. So once again, the people that we really have to thank for this, uh, besides the Eisenhower family, the Kane Foundation, who supports all of this interactive work, are friends from University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Uh, you've met two of them, Jennifer and Lydia in episode eight. But this is something that sets our museum apart from a lot of others because this is hands-on. People are really going to get a sense of what it was like for the people 80 some years ago. So, with that, come see us, come fly, cost you five bucks for fuel.