B.S. Aviation Management
In January 1971, I started attending Embry-Riddle taking classes toward my Aviation Maintenance Management degree. Beginning in the Fall semester, I was hired as a part-time simulator instructor and began teaching instrument procedures in the old AN-T-18 Link Trainers (Blue Box) as the new GAT I trainers were just beginning to show up. At the end semester I was the only instructor who had not moved on. So I was asked to make sure that the schedules were built and things continued to run smoothly. I was appointed as manager the next semester.
In the spring of 1972, the school received the 2F-25 simulator (pictured above) from the Navy. It was a replica of the C-131 (Convair 220/330/440 series of aircraft). Charlie Wentz would come over from Tampa a couple of days per month to work on the GAT simulator and also work on the 2F-25. The first “test flights” were conducted by Charlie and myself in June of 1972. By the winter of 1972 it was finally up and flying. The simulator was never put into any program or used by the school in an official manner. However, the simulator instructors and a number of other pilots from the flight department spent time learning Convair procedures and flying the simulator.
Superintendent simulator trainer
I ran the simulator department until the end of 1973. My last semester at Embry-Riddle was Spring of 1974 at which time I had transitioned to the flight line as a CFI. Charlie Wentz was hired as the full-time Simulator Manager and assigned to perform the required simulator maintenance. I graduated in May 1974 with a BS in AMM.
(As a side note, from January 1975 through January 1977, I went back to work for Embry-Riddle running their programs and teaching in the Air Force and Army education centers in Germany.)
Capt. Jackson Seltzer (’74)
United Airlines (retired)
Senior Manager – Flight Test and
Part 142 Certificate