Recently SimHelp team had to change the red CRT tube in the Airbus A320 Full Flight Simulator situated at Baltic Aviation Academy. Team of qualified engineers wants to give valuable advice, which could help engineers-beginners to save time, health and nerves while changing the CRT tube.
Colored pictures – how are they created?
Nowadays Full Flight Simulator is an integral part of aviation. By realistically imitating aircraft’s flight it helps to learn to operate aircrafts by not breaking the real one, which of course helps to save money. The feeling and vision of a real flight is built not only on full motion, but on the visual part too.
Three calligraphic projectors compose the entire Visual System picture to fill up visual field of view by 180 degrees in horizontal direction and 40 degrees in vertical direction. Each calligraphic projector has 3 CRT tubes. Each tube represents single primary color: Red, Green and Blue, which are projected in the same area to create white color. The intensity of each primary color can be varied dynamically during image generation by different proportions, and the nice colored picture is created in such way.
CRT tubes tends to ‘die’
Unfortunately, tubes are consumable parts and they are aging and loosing intensity while using them. Furthermore visual system defects are the most obvious for any visitors and usually those defects can mislead someone to underrated evaluation of overall simulator condition. When CRT tube ‘dies’ the visual picture colors are being distorted. Depending from which color the tube ‘ends’ its lifetime, the image may become more cyan, yellow or magenta colored. In order to avoid such inconvenience, CRT tube must be changed.
Usual lifetime for a CRT tube is up to 15 000 hours, which equals to about 1.5 years of non-stop work. Considering that simulators are used for a long time, normally up to 20 years or even more, tube replacement procedure will happen many time during the entire lifetime of the simulators.
SimHelp team suggests
Changing the CRT tube is not a simple job, but can be easily managed by FFS engineers if the precise preparation is done. Thought it may appear ‘same old song’ but we will ‘sing it’ again: do your homework and be cautious!
SimHelp team is wishing all the engineers good luck in your daily jobs. You can always ask us for helping you with your simulators by dropping a line at [email protected]
To see how SimHelp engineers replace the red CRT tube on the Airbus A320 FFS, please follow the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YthIIVtUZ3c