BETA TECHNOLOGIES' STRATEGY OF SIMPLICITY WAS underlined when Aviation Week experienced the Alia flight simulator at the company's facility in Washington near Capitol Hill. Running an X-Plane simulation, modeled using real data from flight testing, the fixed-base simulator shows how conventional the Alia is-for most of its flight-and how different it is. The fixed-based simulator includes a full-scale mockup of the Alia's capacious fuselage, showcasing an unobstructed volume that can accommodate a pilot and five passengers or 200 ft.3 of cargo. Large windshield apertures provide unhampered visibility of the curved visual projection screen. The cockpit has three Avidyne screens. The center display is a certified IFD550 flight management system with minor changes to control electronic circuit breakers and display battery information. The two touch-screen, synthetic-vision primary flight displays (PFD) are more heavily modified to show battery and motor information as well as all the usual flight data.
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