81st TRSS develops new trainer for aircraft ramp, door assembly

Published June 29, 2011
By Susan Griggs
81st Training Wing Pubilc Affairs

KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- The 81st Training Support Squadron's trainer development flight is wrapping up another training enhancement project, this time for Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas.

The trainer development team is making good use of its new high-tech facility which opened a year ago to create a new C-130H and J ramp and door assembly simulator. The new project will allow students at Sheppard to learn how to operate an actual aircraft ramp and door assembly in a classroom environment.

Tomme Lassabe, trainer development flight chief, said the device currently in use at Sheppard requires a 400-cycle power source to drive large hydraulic actuators. To meet that power requirement, training is conducted in a noisy aircraft hangar where students are continuously exposed to potential safety and environmental hazards.

Keesler's trainer development professionals traveled to Sheppard to take detailed photographs and discuss the customer's specific needs.

"The new trainer was built to a significantly smaller scale, allowing for mobility and incorporating 110 VAC electrical actuators to simulate the bulky hydraulic actuators," Mr. Lassabe explained. "This allows instruction to be conducted in a classroom environment using only a standard wall outlet.

"The instructor once had to talk above the noise of the external equipment to provide effective training, but the new trainer is extremely quiet. It also takes on a 'green' concept by eliminating the need for hazardous hydraulic fluid."

The trainer development team took advantage of its state-of-the-art equipment and facility that merges hardware production and software development components under one roof. The $13.5 million facility replaced a condemned facility near the flightline that was battered by Hurricane Katrina nearly six years ago.

About 18,000 square feet of the 38,000-square-foot facility is devoted to an industrial area equipped with a down draft paint booth, a powder coating paint booth and oven and a multi-cam router for fabricating items from wood, plastics, and metals. It features an improved sawdust collection system with under-floor duct work and a fused deposition modeling machine.

There's also a welding shop with a fume collection/extraction system, a materials receiving and warehouse storage area, a transfer truck height loading dock with dock leveler, an overhead crane with a two-ton capacity hoist to handle materials and equipment and a 4,000-pound electric forklift for materials management and loading/unloading.