Core Skills – Our New Program

Our team headed to VisionTek near Brisbane Airport for the cadets to participate in The Hangar’s newest program – Core Skills. Through a range of complex and challenging scenarios, the cadets learned that relying on core skills gives the best chance for success regardless of the situation.

VisionTek is an organisation which creates mixed reality training and educational assessment solutions. Utilising A.I. training and assessment in cutting edge simulated virtual environments allowing complete immersion with real educational outcomes. We were given full access to use this technology to create scenarios which started small and ended in one on one dogfighting over the deserts of Nevada.

The first exercise has the Cadets take to the skies in a historic Piper J3 Cub. One of the most famous of all light aircraft, designed and built between 1938 and 1947. This aircraft is basic in its construction with limited technology to keep it in the air. It is seat of your pants; real hands and feet flying.

The sequence involved the Cadets performing core flying manoeuvres including climbing, descending and turning by manipulating the control stick in the cockpit of the Vision Tek simulator; challenging themselves to focus on the core instructions. It was impressive to see them flying the (basic) Piper J3 Cub in the skies over Redcliffe near Brisbane.

Once they had mastered the Cub, it was time to step things up a little. The Pilatus PC-21 is the Royal Australian Air Force’s newest pilot training aircraft, capable of up to 350 knots, aerobatic and full of the latest avionics technology.

Finally, we upgrade the aircraft to the world famous F/A-18 Hornet, and let them race across the skies over the Nevada desert. Again, we had each of them perform climbs, descent and turns. The same simple control inputs that were used in the Cub and PC-21 were now being used to execute the same manoeuvres in the F/A-18 Hornet.

They even buzzed their school along the Brisbane River!

Thank you to the generosity of the team at VisionTek, SimJet and the Air Combat Centre for their continued support of The Hangar. We are so grateful. If you would like to experience this for yourself we conducting a fundraising event that can see you too in a simulated dog fight.

Sound fun? Head to The Hangar’s competition page now!