Hi,
Am a committee member of Flint 2518 squadron, based in North Wales
Am looking for advice from people with experience to see if there is any funding out there for a new flight simulator?
Our flight simulator is old and running slow, so to give our cadets the best experience, we are looking to improve ours.
Any advice will be gratefully received.
Regards
Carl
Hi Mike,
do you have a previous experience in submitting a application for funding?
if so can you give me some pointers please.
Carl
We did (successfully) about 4 yrs ago, to help fund equipment for our indoor air rifle range.
The Grant Application Guidance Notes have been updated since then, so I would use those as your reference.
You have already shown a “need” for what you already have, so that is the first hurdle cleared. 
Price up your options/ desired equipment & request accordingly - we got a good deal locally for our flight sim upgrade from Maplins, & bulk discount separately for some of the hardware such a joysticks / rudder pedals, but we didn’t go for a grant for that equipment.
We have just been successful in getting £4000 from the Tesco ‘bags of help scheme’, which is funded through carrier bag sales in Scotland, England and Wales. With the money we have bought first aid training equipment and have built a virtual reality flight simulator. It was finished yesterday, and so far it has been a truly amazing experience! It takes up very little space too - initial pictures here: https://www.facebook.com/1871sqn/posts/1704837582922453
Cadets will start familiarisation training on Monday.
You can apply for the scheme here: https://www.groundwork.org.uk/Sites/tescocommunityscheme
Once you have filled in the form, your project will be put up for a ‘vote’ with two other projects in a local larger Tesco store. Customers are supposed to be given a blue token to put in a box by the entrance. If you win you get up to £4000 (depending on what you applied for!), 2nd place gets £2000 and 3rd gets £1000.
After the 2 month voting period you get 3/4 of the money upfront then the other 1/4 when you have filled in the grant report at the end of the grant.
I’ve also been successful with Awards for All in the past (grants up to £10000), but they have been very particular in the past and lately we’ve been turned down.
If you do apply then I am happy to look over any applications. Send me a private message on here and i’ll give you my email address.
Thank you for your swift reply, your new equipment looks fantastic and am sure the cadets will have a fantastic experience using it, how much approximately did the equipment cost to give me a ball park figure to look for?
My personal email address is REMOVED
Thanks
carl
Morning , where would I find the price of items required? am new to all this and don’t think Argos do flight simulators, etc Lol
Carl
Your flight SIM looks great, how much did it set you back all in?
We have had £10K out of Awards for all in the past ourselves, they are just particular what they spend money on.
How long is a piece of string? Do you want one PC, linked to 2 - 3 screens for “wrap around” effect, several PC linked together, or a larger scale set-up that incorporates separate displays with flight deck instrumentation / visuals with a “sit-in” flight deck with hard-wired joystick, etc? Do you have space for a integral flight simulator, or does it have to function as a PC for other purposes (classification exams, etc)? Can you purchase the components & use that as a separate “build” project, or do you want a finished package, more or less off the shelf?
If you search within the forum for “flight simulator” you will find a couple of threads that have details / links about different concepts & associated software / hardware requirements. For our set-up, we wanted to link 3 PCs, so planned on a high-ish specification “gaming” PC. Bought from Maplins, they work well, & if we want to expand them to handle more than one display, etc, easy to do. We also got a good discount for buying PCs (Devastor model at the time) & screens (24") together. Range of Maplins computers here. Screens here.
Shop around, you may have a local (or on-line) PC outlet that would be the best option, or one of your sqn staff might have an “in” for a company that provides PCs for their workplace. Any possibility of sponsorship?
Morning Mike,
Thanks for replying; I have no idea what so ever what is involved in a simulator. so can you let me know what is actually required for a sim, I.E software, Hardware, equipment etc… so could you give me a quick breakdown on cost of the items you bought, so I can add the cost to the letters I will be sending out to companies within the are, also do you know if you can get funding from the wing that your squadron is affiliated to.
Thanks
carl
If only it were that easy.
Until you can establish what you want (basic / medium / advanced), then it’s impossible to look at equipment / costings. If you’ve looked back at the previous flight simulator threads, you will see a range of set-ups, with corresponding details of specs.
Even then, a higher category spec for just one item (larger display for example) could make several hundred £££ difference.
The other way is to work back from an expectation of budget (your existing funds + I grant request) & price up accordingly.
It baffles me that we have to raise money for flight sims. We’ve bought a flight sim but the brief was portability, we don’t have the room for a bulky set up, and we’ve had it out in several places with a projector and screen and it’s been used, but mostly by 8-10 year olds. We’ve charged a £1 for 10 minutes and made money from it as well.
What would HQAC do if they couldn’t just constantly dump expensive equipment and ongoing costs onto Sqn Committees? What would happen if HQAC had to find the money? (rhetorical question) They must have fun issuing edicts knowing they can just pass any financial responsibility to squadrons.
Nearly all of the grants we have applied for over the years have needed my input as well.