Like many other engineering schools, the School of Engineering and Information Technology (SEIT) at the University of New South Wales (Canberra) recognised the importance of student laboratories to complement classroom theory. As Eley (1995) and others have espoused, this is because laboratory work enables students to observe the relationship between theory and practice. Importantly, students begin to gain confidence in the application of theory by observing its practical limitations. For this reason, it was decided to develop an airborne laboratory facility. An aeroplane was acquired and it was equipped with a suite of sensors and instruments that allowed many aeroplane flight parameters to be measured and recorded. Beginning in 1998, Aeronautical Engineering students and candidate pilots carried out a flight which allowed them to investigate aspects of aircraft performance, handling qualities and stability (static and dynamic) in a 1.2 hour flight. These experiments maximized the students’ experience and exposure to flight test. After an evaluation of the effort and time that academic staff required to operate the flight laboratory, in 2010 the airborne flight laboratory was discontinued. In its place there has been developed an Aviation Studio, equipped with a fixed-base flight simulator. Similar to the work carried out by Done and Neal (2012), the engineering flight simulator has been specifically designed as a versatile and practical hands-on aid to the teaching of flight mechanics and dynamics and aircraft design. Using a flight console, screens and X-Plane software, students can manipulate many aircraft characteristics.
