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Thorunn Howatt
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (July 25/01) - The 40-ton truck lurches closer, out of control, to the dirt walls lining the narrow tunnel of the mine site.
Unable to pull the monstrous vehicle out of danger the driver is jarred to a stop. He throws up his hands in laughter.
 Mike Vaydik drove through a virtual reality practice route with a simulated 40-ton truck owned by Nuna Logistics. - Thorunn Howatt/NNSL photo |
The giant video game is valued at about $500,000 and landed in Yellowknife last week from Perth, Australia.
The unit, which is installed in a mobile trailer, looks and feels like the inside of a giant piece of heavy equipment.
A huge video screen surrounds a driver trainee who sits in a mocked-up driver's seat and is confronted with shifting levers, displays and a steering wheel. An instructor can watch the pupil go through a series of driving lessons while giving useful tips.
Nuna is billing the joyride machine as Canada's first mining truck and heavy equipment operator simulator. It is the first of its kind in Canada and only the seventh in the world said Nuna's president, Mervyn Hempenstall.
"It's the first Arctic version," he said, adding the skid trailer is designed to fit inside the belly of a Hercules aircraft in order to move it to mine sites.
"The training program is totally intensified yet there is no danger to people or equipment."
Nuna can teach students how to operate heavy machinery in nine days compared to the previous training period of three weeks.
After the pupil manoeuvres through an intense drill, the on-board computer spits out a report card that pinpoints commonly made errors and bad driving habits.
Hempenstall said the simulator is completely self-contained, complete with generator. Nuna bills the unit out at $1,800 per day and hopes to find customers in NWT mine sites as well as Alberta's oil sands.
At a simulator demonstration last week, trainer Glenn Jones ran Chamber of Mines general manager Mike Vaydik through the paces.
Jones said he looks forward to training people in the safe environment of the simulator. He teaches up to 25 students a week how to operate heavy machinery.
"If they do something wrong here all it's going to hurt is their pride," said Jones.
Nuna Logistics builds roads and infrastructure for the mining industry in the Western Arctic. They built a 7,000-foot runway at Koala Lake for Diamond company BHP. Nuna is a joint venture between Nunasi, Kitikmeot Inuit and Pilot Shipping Ltd.
