A Visit With Roy Chaffin & Bill Rambow

Bill and Roy had a booth set up with FS2000 running their R4D-6 for people to try. The booth got a lot of attention.

"MAAM", as it's also known, held its annual World War II Weekend on June 8th through the 10th, 2001 and this was the event that brought me together with designers Roy Chaffin and Bill Rambow. Bill only had to travel from nearby Maryland for the weekend, but Roy came from his home near London. The third member of the team, Jan Visser, lives in The Netherlands and was not able to attend.

As for me, getting to Reading involved a two hour flight down from Massachusetts. Even before seeing the airport it was clear this was going to be a busy place, as the vectoring to the airport was "interesting" to

Display area including the R4D-6.

say the least (I don't think any of the flightsim ATC programs offer anything like this!) and plenty of traffic was being called out. Certainly not your typical day at a relatively small airport. On short final I could see the National Warplane Museum's B-17 "Fuddy Duddy" holding for me to land...wow, this is great already!

Despite the crowds and plenty of "distractions" parked on the ramp, I found Roy and Bill quickly, at their setup in the MAAM hangar. Normally this building is full of planes that make up the museum's collection but today the planes were out in the sun and the building was full of booths with all kinds of aviation related materials. Roy and Bill, of course, were promoting flightsimming and specifically the donationware version of their R4D-6.

Roy Chaffin, Nels Anderson and Bill Rambow under the MAAM R4D-6.

This CD is another great example of synergy, with the flightsim designers and the museum teaming up to benefit both. The designers got extensive access to a fabulous aircraft featuring an award winning restoration while the museum gets the help of the designers in keeping that very aircraft operating. Unfortunately, the R4D-6 is not currently flying as it's in need of a $45000 engine (and you thought flightsimming was expensive!). But the design team has offered significant help by raising over $30000 through sales of the donationware CD version of the plane. If you don't have your own copy I can highly recommend it; versions of the plane are included for FS2000, FS98, CFS and CFS2 along with videos of the real plane in flight, photos, and three different real DC-3 manuals. The CD is available online from the MAAM museum store.

In the photos you can see Roy and Bill's booth. This was the third day of the show and the long hours had taken a bit of a toll on their voices but not on their enthusiasm. They'd also worn out one set of flight controls, with all the people trying their hand at flying the R4D-6. There was a constant stream of people of all ages giving the plane a workout.

The crew of the Memphis Belle, one of three B-17's attending the show.

A tank drives through the WWII encampment. There were all sorts of vehicles constantly moving.

During the rest of the day I was able to spend some time with Roy and Bill and learn a little about the design process and their future plans. Fans of the R4D-6 will be pleased to know that it will be revised to support FS2002

Bet you can't wait to get your hands on MAAM's B-25 "Briefing Time". This fall you'll have the chance.

when it comes out this fall. As it turns out, the plane is one of the favorites of the FS2002 design team at Microsoft so the necessary tools and information will be made available to upgrade the plane and in fact it's likely the revised R4D-6 will be one of the first true FS2002 planes available come this fall.

The team has other things in the works too...

I'm often asked "can you make such and such a plane for me?" which is kind of strange considering I'm a web site operator and don't have a clue how to design a flightsim plane. But of course the real designers get these requests too and having talked with Roy and Bill and seeing a small part of the process of their next design it's clear why such requests usually cannot be answered with a "yes".

Again, using that synergy between the flightsim design team and the museum, the team's next project is a flightsim version of the museum's North American B-25 Mitchell bomber "Briefing Time". This is perhaps the most authentic B-25 you'll find, and was an award winner in its class a few years back at Oshkosh.

Come this fall this B-25 panel will be a familiar sight to many flightsimmers.

Of course, it's a little better taken care of than B-25's were during WWII but the details of the plane are very authentic. For example, it still has its armor plating, which most owners of restored planes remove to save weight. Roy and I spent quite a bit of time in the cockpit and there too the details were impressive. Roy told me that whenever the museum comes across a B-25 component that "Briefing Time" is missing they try to obtain it and add it to the plane, so over time it's actually become more and more accurately restored.

At their booth in the hangar Roy and Bill had still images of the upcoming flightsim version of the B-25. They already look quite impressive. The flight model, though, is still under development and of course getting that right is no easy task. The graphics and sound work is not complete either and in fact this is part of the reason Roy came over from England.

Previous to the airshow, the designers had taken several rides in the B-25 to record the sights and sounds of this magnificent plane in motion. On the day I was there development continued. As I mentioned, Roy and I spent some time in the cockpit, which with the warm sunny weather and green roof panel

Roy at the co-pilot position of the B-25. It was literally like a greenhouse in there...Roy does not have green skin but the transparent green roof panel makes it look that way.

was literally a greenhouse! Roy uses a very high end digital camera to capture the images that will make up the flightsim aircraft. The camera has a 1 gigabyte disk drive in it which they've filled up several times already in developing the B-25 images. That's a lot of pictures...

It's interesting to note how the design team works. Outside his flightsim activities Roy is a wildlife artist (you can see some of his amazing paintings at his web site www.roychaffin.com). Seeing him taking all the photos and knowing his background you'd think Roy would be the graphics man but no, that's Bill...Roy does the panel and gauge programming.

The B-25 interior is interesting. The pilots have a rather comfortable cockpit to work in but getting there requires entering from the bottom of the plane followed by a bit of twisting and turning that I don't think the flightsim version will be able to capture. The top gunner practically wears the turret bubble while sitting on a bicycle type seat straddling a post and with his hands gripping the gun controls. The nose gunner has to slide down a tunnel on his back, under the pilot's position to reach his post. The tail gunner has a similar tunnel and once in position not a whole lot of room. There are also two side gunner positions. When using the flightsim version you'll be able to observe from many of these points. I lent my above average height to the project by snapping some photos from places that Roy could not reach.

Here's one way to get your 15 minutes of fame...as the "pilot" in the flightsim version of the B-25. Bill and Roy wait as our pilot completes getting into his uniform.

Later this year when the B-25 comes out you'll be seeing this pilot at the controls; notice the hands in position on the yoke and throttle.

One flightsimmer will get his 15 minutes of fame as part of the B-25 project. He came by the booth wearing the appropriate uniform for a B-25 crewman and was recruited to play the part of the flightsim version of the

Roy photographed the WWII officer from a variety of positions inside the B-25 too.

crew (who says you should never volunteer for anything!). This required another large group of digital images as he was photographed both outside and inside the plane, wearing different pieces of gear (two different hats, headset, leather jacket, etc.). In the photos you can see how this was accomplished. Seeing this small part of the flightsim aircraft development really makes one appreciate just how much work is involved in creating a complete model from scratch.

Once complete, the B-25 is also going to be available as a donationware CD. Since the museum's B-25 is in good flying shape this fund raiser will go to support the P-61 Black Widow currently undergoing restoration in the museum's hangar. This is quite an amazing restoration, having begun way back in 1980, and requiring several expeditions to Indonesia to recover the plane from the side of a mountain before it could be brought to Reading for the

Bill Rambow demonstrates the flightsim version of the R4D-6 to one of the many people attending the show in uniform.

actual restoration work. I got a chance to see it up close and it's starting to look like an airplane again which is quite amazing considering what the restorers started with. Helping to return this rare bird to flying status is certainly a good reason to purchase the donationware B-25 CD when it becomes available late this year. (By the way, Abacus sells a flightsim version of the MAAM P-61 and a portion of each sale of this also goes towards the restoration project; for information, click here.)

Having finally gotten to meet some of the people behind these projects I'm certainly looking forward to more pleasant hours at the controls of the R4D-6 and later this year the B-25. It's was great to meet the designers and see the real planes too. So after a quick dinner it was back into my little plane and off into the sunset (er, except I had to fly east, so off away from the sunset) and back home to share this road trip with you.

Nels Anderson
webmaster@flightsim.com