Thursday, August 23, 2007

 

The Vital Link


This strange looking thing is actually one of the most important "aeroplanes" ever built. It is a Link Trainer. The first one was built by Edwin Link in 1929. He wanted to build something that would teach new pilots to fly by instruments, without the expense and danger of using real aircraft. The result was the first real flight simulator. It looks a bit rough and ready compared to today's high-tech simulators but it was so successful that hundreds of thousands of pilots were trained on them during World War 2. They were used in the USA, Australia, Britain, Canada, USSR and even Germany and Japan. This one is in the South Australian Aviation Museum. As you can see in the top photo, it looks reasonably large when there is only a small bear in the cockpit, although it must have been cramped for full-sized people. Of course, I got Dad to make me a model of one as soon as we got home. You can see that the Link is really quite small because the 1/72 scale model is much smaller than the small bear. Models are great, almost as good as real aeroplanes.

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