Talk about landing a dream business

The county welcomes a sophisticated, clean and very rich newcomer, a company that makes flight simulators.

ODESSA - Opinicus represents Pasco County's ideal future.

"The biggest thing about Opinicus is that it's a technology company," said Mary Jane Stanley, president of the Pasco Economic Development Council. "And it's a corporate headquarters. And it's on the state's target industry list. And it's on Pasco's target industry list.

"It's the number of jobs. The type of jobs. The amount they pay," Stanley said, laughing. "There isn't anything we don't like about Opinicus."

The company's two-story building at State Road 54 and the Suncoast Parkway is the anchor tenant for what developers and county officials hope will be a new economic heart for the county, a mix of office, retail and residential space.

Opinicus, which moved into its $5-million Pasco facility last month, has an exclusive contract to build simulators for the Eclipse 500, a $1.5-million microjet that the Wall Street Journal called "the next thing in air travel."

The company is also Pasco's first significant piece of Florida's $2.6-billion simulation, training and modeling industry.

Opinicus is one of an estimated 3,500 companies in the state that create computer graphics, amusement park rides, medical training dummies and top-of-the-line aircraft simulators. The Tampa Bay area has about 1,300 of those firms, including CAE, a Canadian-owned company with a Tampa facility that designs and builds increasingly realistic virtual battlefields where teams of pilots can practice before heading into real combat.

"The closest thing the public has seen is probably a space ride at Disney," said John Lenyo, president of the U.S. division of CAE. "The difference in a simulator is that you're in control of the action."

Bolt One One is in trouble. The crew of the U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker is struggling with malfunctions that began even before takeoff.

Valves keep jamming. A flap control is sheared. When an engine goes, they declare an emergency.

Now a grumpy "general" in back wants to know why he is so late for an important meeting.

"Tell him he's going to miss it. We've got a lot of problems up here," says 1st Lt. Ryan Ferdinandsen, Bolt One One's co-pilot.

"This jet is having a rough day," says the pilot, Capt. Chad Gugas, flipping through a thick binder of emergency procedures.

In the early days of aviation, Gugas and Ferdinandsen would have learned to handle trouble in the school of hard knocks.

Figure it out or crash and burn.

Bolt One One's crew has the benefit of a $30-million KC-135 flight simulator and a computer packed with a long list of aviation nightmares. They learn to deal with danger in the sky without ever leaving the ground.

Opinicus founders Jim Takats and Mark Budd left Reflectone in Tampa, now CAE, in the early 1980s and started Opinicus in 1988. Since then, the company has grown from a small consulting firm behind a Clearwater strip mall to a full-service simulator manufacturer with military and airline clients including Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong-based international airline. Opinicus engineers are in the final stages of designing the Eclipse 500 simulator, a top-of-the-line, or Level D, model that will provide a realistic flight environment.

The Federal Aviation Administration requires Level D simulators to "perform" just like the real aircraft, from the right feel of the controls in a crosswind to the sounds made by jammed landing gear.

Jennifer Frame, an Opinicus vice president, declined to say how much the contract was worth to her company. But a top-of-the-line simulator can cost $30-million, and Opinicus plans to build a few Eclipse 500 simulators a year for the next decade.

At $1.5-million each, Eclipse jets cost about $1-million less than the closest business-jet competitors. Aviation experts predict it will spawn a new fleet of air taxi service. The company began manufacturing its first jet on March 1 with orders for about 2,500 more.

Opinicus expects to begin assembling the first Eclipse simulator in Pasco County in July.

In Tampa, CAE engineers are working on a big evolution in an industry that began with the first full-motion simulator in 1929.

CAE is creating virtual battlefields where air crews in multiple $35-million simulators can practice together before going into combat. They are working to simulate insurgent tactics as well as realistic terrain and flight performance.

"When they're practicing a missile strike in Iraq, they look out the window and see Iraq," Lenyo said. "They can actually fight the battle before they fight the battle. It increases their chances of getting back in one piece and completing the mission. It is a whole lot safer - and cheaper."

Flying has always been expensive and dangerous. But Ed Link, the son of an organ manufacturer, wanted more stick time.

The New York entrepreneur designed the first full-motion simulator using flight controls and a system of motors, vacuums and organ bellows from his father's factory. His famous "Blue Box" simulator debuted in 1929.

"He was looking for a better way to teach people how to fly other than just take them up in an airplane, fly them around and hope for the best," said Link's 82-year-old sister, Marilyn Link, of Vero Beach.

During World War II, Link sold more than 10,000 simulators to the military. They cost $3,500 each.

Modern flight simulators cost between $1-million for a basic, stationary model and $35-million for a highly customized full-motion military simulator.

"Simulators are a cost-saving measure," Takats, the Opinicus president, said. "Even in a down economy, it's still a way to train."

The evolution of simulators mirrors that of the computer gaming industry. The crude polygon graphics and massive computer servers of the 1980s have given way to sleek processors and smooth 21st century graphics. But there is room for improvement.

"We can fool your inner ear pretty well," Lenyo said. "The thing we haven't gotten done is having the images as good as reality. You can tell you're looking at Tampa International Airport, but you can also tell it's computer generated."

The flight simulator used in the Bolt One One exercise is at MacDill Air Force Base, but the flight crew is lined up on a computer-generated simulation of the McConnell Air Force Base runway in Kansas.

Tucked into the simulator cockpit behind pilots Gugas and Ferdinandsen, instructor Bob Benson observes and advises them on their handling of the problems he has created.

He's also the voice of the grumpy general.

"We make them sweat, but we don't overdo it," said Benson, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. "You can overload anyone. But once you overload a crew, you might as well stop. They won't be learning."

Because a reporter and photographer are on board, the simulator is not on its hydraulic motion platform. The Air Force doesn't want bruised visitors.

On full motion, Bolt One One's crew would feel a bad landing. A week earlier another crew broke several graphics cards on the simulator while practicing a hard wind-shear landing.

"You get a pretty good ride," Gugas said after the mission. "You have to be belted in. I've been dropped in the sim once. It took a while to readjust my back."

Ferdinandsen brings it in for a smooth landing.

The crew takes a break. Next up: a spine-jarring exercise in dealing with stalls.

"I've been lucky that a lot of things that happen here haven't happened to me yet," Gugas said. He raps his knuckles on a conference room table.