Quote from Ron Rollo on December 10, 2017, 9:50 pm

Hello Hangar45 Members From Jacksonville Florida!

I never had the opportunity to write my own "Welcome Post" in the previous forum so I figured I would do it now.  My name is Ron Rollo, one of the Hangar45's administrators and if you are familiar with Hangar45, you know who I am.  But for those that are new to the hangar, here is a little about myself.  First off, I am happily married to my wife Michelle of 16 years and counting!  I have a son Christopher, a late son Zachary who passed away in May 2016 (he was only 23 years old and was in the US Army, R.I.P.) and a daughter Morgan.  And last but not least, I have a two year old grandson, Jett, who will absolutely love aviation and flight simulation if I have anything to say about it!  We all hope right?

 

My passion for aviation is deep rooted from way back when my uncle Wayne would tell stories about his aviation days.  The Zenith moment in his aviation career was when he was piloting the Concord across the Atlantic Ocean for Braniff Airlines.  His stories lead me to seek an early career with the United States Navy Reserve flying as a AW air crewman on the Orion P3-C's.  While I was in the Navy, I had the opportunity to fly the P3-C simulators.  That was back in the early 1990's and to me, it was beyond impressive!  But then again the U.S. government has an endless supply of funds to put towards projects like this right!

 

So that is how I got bit by the bug!  But the problem was I could never afford a full scale simulator the way I had envisioned them.  I started doing some research on the web around 2003 and discovered that there were hundreds of guys building full scale flight simulators around the world.  Most of these sims were of the "Big Heavies", Boeng 737, 747 and AirBuses.  This was great but it posed two issues for me:  First, the cost of a larger simulator, and second, the needed space to put a full scale sim.

 

I started looking at the possibilities of building a smaller business jet sim and I was immediately drawn to the Learjet45.  There were a small handful of guys that already had a working model of a Lear45 including, DonnyRay Jones, Per Alm and Eric Tomlin to name a few.  Doing a little research on these guys I discovered that Eric Tomlin was just 90 minutes north of my location in Waycross Georgia!  In 2007 I decided to call him out of the blue and introduce myself.

 

By this time I had already decided that I was going to be building a Lear45 and I was going to start from the outside and work my way in.  This meant that I was going to be building a cockpit shell totally opposite from the conventional way of building a home simulator.  The first few conversations with Eric were very encouraging although he must have thought I was crazy to take on the shell first but that was my plan.  Keep in mind I had zero sim experience with the exception of building what I called a "Flight Box" just to prove the concept to myself.....and maybe my wife!

 

It was not long before Eric and I were talking about building a website that would be dedicated to just the Lear45 simulator.  This was important to us because every other website dedicated to flight simulation covered EVERY aircraft simulator that was being built.  As you can imagine these websites could be a little confusing especially if you are looking for specific "systems information" on one particular type of aircraft.  A one stop shop to share information, ideas, showcase our projects and to make parts available was the goal!

 

Eric and I enlisted the help of about six current (at the time) Lear45 simulator builders to help select a name for our new website because we wanted to foster a club atmosphere from the very beginning.  You will never guess what name we finally settled on....  Okay, it was Hangar45.net and now you know how it came about!

 

My personal goal early on was to build a full scale Lear45 simulator to the best of my abilities.  Keep in mind at the time, there was very little outside help from any suppliers and there was no uniformity between any of the then current (2008) Lear45 builders.  I saw a huge need to find a way to try to standardize the Lear45 home cockpit so that we all would be on the same page, at least with the physical scale of the project anyway.  I remember telling Eric, "Your physical Lear sim is going to become obsolete and you will have no choice but to start form scratch if you want to have a one to one scale Lear45".  At first he resisted the idea because the thought of setting aside all the previous work killed him.  But within a few months, he was fully on board with idea and was helping with the scaling process.

 

With that said, I have literally built my simulator 2.5 times.  When you look at photos of my sim it looks nice and well put together, and it is!  But what you don't see is the process that got my sim to this point.  Things have been done, redone, torn down and done again.  All in an effort to get it as close to right as possible.  And to be honest with everyone, I plan on taking things down again to modify a few things here and there.

 

My goal was to have the sim completed within ten years.  Ten years you say!?  Yes, ten years.  And that was back in 2007.  It has been ten years and my sim is not complete.  I would say I am at about 85% complete.  By the way, none of us will ever be 100% because there will always be something that you will want to add or revisit.  Anyway, I knew the project would take at least ten years because another one of my goals was to help other builders along the way!  Hangar45 and my personal project website, Project45.us have become more like a hobby job!   Hobby job = "A job that you love to do but does not pay enough to quit your day job"

 

Where there is a will there is a way.  One of the biggest challenges with this project is finding a solution to a problem without spending a governmental fortune.  A couple of the tools and skills that I found was absolutely necessary with a project of this magnitude was drawing in CAD and cutting with a CNC. Two things I knew nothing about!  I decided to jump in a teach myself these skills and purchased a home built CNC machine.  The CNC machine has been the solution to so many problems and if you have been in the hangar for any length of time, you probably have a few things created from my CNC.

 

Speaking of jobs, I am at the end of my law enforcement career with the local sheriff's office after 25 years.  In the middle of 2018, I will be "retiring" from my day job and taking on a full time "hobby job" building parts for our members here in the hangar!  And maybe actually have time to finish my own project and MAYBE even have time to enjoy it a little.  You know, get in it a fly it somewhere in cyberspace?  Sometimes I forget what I am building and what I should be doing with it!

 

For those guys who have been around for a while knew that my father, Ron Rollo Sr. (R.I.P.) was one of my biggest fans and vice versa.  In October 2017 , my father lost his battle with prostate cancer.  My father was my "right hand man" with this project and loved to help out with cutting parts.  He loved operating the CNC machine and was content for hours catching parts as they finished.  It has been a rough patch these past 20 months to say the least with the passing of Zachary and then my father but this is where I am in life at the moment.

 

There have been many other major bumps in the road with life and with this project but through it all, I am still very optimistic and excited of where the project is and where I see it going in the future.  When I first started this project I had a vision of what I thought it was going to be.  We have surpassed that vision by far and I think as more time and talented folks join the hangar, we will all be pleasantly surprised where all of our project end up in the near future!

 

Welcome to the hangar everyone!  Feel free to start a new thread and post a little about yourself and your project!