The Link Trainer: An Uncommanded Roll Gets Our Author's Attention

The Link Trainer: An Uncommanded Roll Gets Our Author’s Attention

Meg Godlewski

Friday, September 16, 2022 at 05:38 PM ET

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The 1940s-era Link Trainer was used by thousands of pilot trainees. [Photo: Meg Godlewski]

Key Takeaways:

The author recounts their experience flying a newly restored Link Trainer, a historically significant mechanical flight simulator from the 1920s used extensively for instrument training in WWII.
Despite extensive modern simulator experience, the Link Trainer's physical motion and primitive, non-standard instrument layout presented unique challenges for instrument scanning and aircraft control.
The Link Trainer's design, including its vacuum tubes, pulleys, and bellows, provides physical sensations of pitch, yaw, and roll, distinguishing it from static simulators.
The training session was cut short by a mechanical failure (a broken yaw belt), underscoring the significant challenges and custom fabrication required to maintain these rare, functional historical devices.

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I have logged in excess of 3,000 hours in a Redbird FMX Advanced Aviation Training Device. These are the devices that are mounted on cradles that provide the unit with pitch, yaw, and roll. One of the biggest surprises for the trainees who have been “flying” using the Microsoft Flight Simulator program and then try to fly the FMX is how quickly their instrument scan and aircraft control goes askance when the dimension of movement is added to the equation.

I was thinking about this yesterday when I climbed into a Link Trainer at the Museum of Flight Restoration Center at Snohomish County Airport/Paine Field (KPAE). For the unfamiliar, the Link Trainer was designed in the 1920s by Edwin Link of Binghamton, New York. During World War II, Link trainers were used extensively to train pilots to fly by instruments.