Come Fly With Us

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Talk about a fantastic volunteer opportunity…

A little bit about our simulators

The Patuxent River Naval Air Museum is very fortunate to have two vintage F-14 cockpit pilot trainers, which in their day were used to train pilots to take off, land, and operate the weapons system.  Today they provide an outstanding funding source for the museum, as our visitors enjoy the opportunity to fly one of the dozen airplane types our simulator experience can provide. The two cockpits can even fly in the same airspace which emboldens some “pilots” to go air to air combat with a buddy.  If you just want to fly, you can take off from North Island San Diego, for instance, and fly to any one of 4 other airports, or take a trap aboard the USS Constellation before catapulting your aircraft on a flight back home.  Pilot aids such as TACAN and ILS are available to help locate these landing areas plus many other capabilities.

Some recent upgrades

The museum charges each simulator customer $10 for a 30-minute interactive flight.  Most of the riders are individual teens through adults, but also we are getting a lot of youth tours.  During the summer of 2017 and into 2018 the simulators were upgraded with high-end gaming computers, and a new operating system (Windows 7), as well as HDMI flat screen displays, all of which have provided significant improvement in performance.

Our team

The Flight Simulator Team is made up of volunteers, headed by Mr. Chad Miller. The dedicated volunteers are divided into two groups:   Simulator Maintainers and Simulator Operators/Instructors.

Simulator Maintainers  Randy Hepp has taken the lead here, with support from Jack Romano. Together they have made the bulk of the upgrades and perform regular maintenance, but they need help. Additional volunteers are needed, those who are familiar with computers and/or simulators, or general cockpit maintenance to ensure that the systems stay up and operating smoothly.

Simulator Operators / Instructors The lead for this is Mr. Daniel Dickey. These volunteers are trained to operate the simulators and configure the airplanes for flight.  As an instructor, the volunteer teaches our “customer pilots” the layout of the cockpits and instructs them how to fly.

At the moment we are greatly in need of Operators/Instructors.  During the summer months the high-schoolers (13 years old) become more available and we are very pleased to have a cadre of youth volunteers at the ready!  Our policy is to ensure we have an adult operator/instructor to man the simulators when they are open, and these folks work alongside our youth volunteers. Currently, we are recruiting for some more adults who would like to spend a some time helping our simulator department so that we can stay open for the public as many days as possible. The Operator /Instructor training takes about 2 hours and can be conducted at your convenience.  The flight simulators are advertised to be operating on Saturdays from 10AM – 5 PM.  During the summer, we would like to operate a few days during mid week as well.

Contact us!
Please contact either Randy Hepp or Daniel Dickey if you are interested in supporting the Flight Simulator Team, or reply to this email and we will be happy to answer your questions about the simulator program.

Randy Hepp
randy.hepp@paxmuseum.org
301.863.1900
Dan Dickey 
dan.dickey@paxmuseum.org
301.247.9789
Amy Davis
amy.davis@paxmuseum.org
volunteers@paxmuseum.org
301.863.1900 *4