Part II: DynaLantic Corp.
Dr. James W. (Jim) Williams
An unobtrusive building next to Blackwell Field Airport in Ozark houses a prime example of how the world is changing in the early 21st century - especially as relates to Alabama, the aerospace industry, and a global economy. Key ingredients in this change are energetic and creative people, a location that ties activities into a global marketplace, and adaptive reuse of seemingly obsolete hardware.
DynaLantic is a small company that provides simulations and simulation training for a broad spectrum of users. The company arose in 1984 when Gould, Incorporated, divested its Power Plants Product Line. Gould had acquired this part of its operations in 1977 by absorbing Hydrosystems Inc, which began as the Hydrospace Division of Republic Aviation. Its origins meant that DynaLantic's roots were deep in the Northeast, with Long Island, New York, as its home.
The main thread running through this story is one person -- Paul J. Patin, founder and CEO of DynaLantic. In 1984 Patin was Gould's Vice President of Engineering and responsible for engineering management of the Gould's Simulation Systems Division. By then, Patin, whose bachelor's degree was in nuclear engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, already had almost 20 years' experience in the business. Starting as a systems engineer with Republic Aviation's Hydrospace Division, Patin moved up through project management, engineering management, and marketing for simulation projects.
As Chief Engineer for nuclear power plant simulator products, Patin headed a group of 120 engineering professionals. By the time Gould acquired Hydrosystems, Patin was Vice President of New Business Development, winning over $50 million in simulator contracts. These contracts included designing and developing the largest, most complex simulations - for submarines, ship control simulators, and C-5 aircraft.
Patin took the new company farther afield. DynaLantic continued developing power plant simulation and plant monitoring systems for commercial utilities. However, the new company reached out into new types of systems and into an international marketplace. DynaLantic developed systems for driver license testing in North Dakota and Connecticut. The company also developed a Truck Driver Training Device, automatic measuring equipment, and special equipment under major subcontracts for Westinghouse, Singer-Link and Lockheed-Martin. New York City Transit (NYCT) engaged DynaLantic to provide simulators for several types of passenger trains. These were sophisticated, interactive systems with six-degree freedom of motion and large panoramic views to train 3000 operators in both normal and emergency procedures.
DynaLantic also moved into simulation systems that covered complex problems over wide geographic areas. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 required the Coast Guard to conduct area, emergency-response exercises in ports and waterways several times each year. In 1998 DynaLantic delivered PISCES that gave controllers a clear view, displayed on electronic nautical charts, of the status of an exercise. DynaLantic also furnished the U.S. Navy a Submarine Ship Control Operator Trainer for the SEAWOLF class. During this era, DynaLantic became an international presence with a shipboard engineering and maintenance trainer for the Republic of China Navy.
Along the way, DynaLantic moved into simulation for U.S. Army Aviation. The company won a contract to extend the service life for the Huey UH-1H Instrument Flight Trainers. The contract involved upgrading all parts of the system at many locations. This project led DynaLantic into developing simulators and upgrades for both military and civilian helicopters. Customers for these services included the governments of the Republic of Korea, Colombia, and Mexico.
DynaLantic's venture into Huey simulators finally brought the company to Ozark, which had at least three major draws. One was the aviation-rich environment. That included Fort Rucker and BellAero's U.S. Helicopter, which was remanufacturing castoff Hueys as the Huey II. For DynaLantic, sitting right across the runway of Ozark's municipal airport from U.S. Helicopter offered a huge benefit. Customers for the Huey II could train on the system and pick up their own helicopters in the same place.
The high density of longstanding aviation activities in the locality also gave DynaLantic immediate access to people with needed skills and related expertise. Sitting within a half mile of the Aviation Campus of Enterprise Ozark Community College also meant long-term sustainment of this labor pool.
A second draw was the highly favorable business climate. For DynaLantic this climate included active support from the City of Ozark and especially Mayor Bob Bunting. Local business leaders were key supporters, including Frank Garrett, Dale County President of CB&T Bank. CB&T provided the loan to build the DynaFlight Training Center (DTC). CB&T also provided development money to add a Huey II simulator with a full visual system. Jim Head, president of J. B. Head Construction Co., Inc. became the builder and construction manager for the DTC. The Ozark area also offered much lower costs of operation, including land acquisition, than available in Long Island.
A third draw was the global opportunities that the aviation complex around Ozark and Fort Rucker created. With today's technology, the worldwide center of a kind of activity can be almost anywhere. The concentration of people, organizations, and interests in the Wiregrass made it
such a center in the global economy for helicopter aviation. By adding itself into the mix, DynaLantic increased the locality's magnetic strength. Rather than taking jobs and business away, globalization would naturally draw them into this part of Alabama.
The third element in the DynaLantic story was proof of the saying, ‘One man's trash is another man's treasure.' DynaLantic saw a potential in providing training, as well as in manufacturing and supporting simulators, for the Hueys and Cobras that the U.S. Army was casting off. DynaLantic acquired some Huey simulators and targeted foreign users buying Huey IIs from US Helicopter.
When the Army scrapped its AH-1F Cobra simulators, DynaLantic saved the last one. Turning these scrap systems into something useful to a future customer took intense effort and a kind of expertise that few companies could muster. In this respect, DynaLantic was ideally positioned with other members of its team.
Bob Catron, Vice President for Business Development, is a retired Army aviator. His career had included being Army Program Manager for Trade with the UH-1 Flight Simulator Development & Production Program. Douglas DiMartino, Vice President of Engineering, was an electronics engineer with long experience in simulations. DiMartino's career started with Hydrosystems. His career and Patin's uniquely paralleled and repeatedly intersected.
The two reunited as part of a team before the move to Alabama. As with a house, it's often easier to build from the ground up than to remodel. DiMartino could work through the problems of reviving legacy hardware and software. Both Huey and Cobra simulators were built with generations of technology that, in key parts, simply were unsustainable. Challenges were greatest with the Cobra.
The Cobra's visual system depended on Digital Equipment Company's PDP-11/55 host computers. This 1980s-era technology took twenty racks of special electronics to generate the cockpit view. DynaLantic had to design a new interface, including both hardware and software, to bridge the gaps to high-resolution graphics. Even the land and sea areas covered in the new, synthetic environment were a challenge. To be compatible with both the new and legacy computer systems, 3-dimensional displays had to be generated from 2-dimensional contour charts.
Pioneering is hard, risky work. As the saying goes, life is what happens when you're on your way to somewhere else. So it has been for DynaLantic. Just getting spare parts delayed making the Cobra simulator operational by a year. Costs from that delay pushed the company beyond both its internal and bank funding. Meantime the global market evolved.
DynaLantic's main income is now coming from providing training, not trainers. So, over three years, the core business model shifted from manufacturing to service. The process led DynaLantic to reach again beyond the original scope of the venture, which was to train U.S. Allies for legacy U.S. Army equipment. DynaLantic saw both need and opportunity for training on the Russian Mi-8/Mi-17 Multi-Mission Helicopter (NATO codename Hip). Like Hueys and Cobras, the Mi-17 exists in large numbers, is widespread, and promises to be used for a long time. More than 12,000 were built. More than 2800 were exported. More than fifty nations now use them. To fund the Mi-17 project DynaLantic began seeking an investor. Meantime, the manufacturing goal went on standby, to reignite if and when DynaLantic's new market presence creates work in simulator development.
Going forward, DynaLantic has big advantages. First, the company is a unique provider in a global market with large potential revenues and significant barriers for competitors to enter. DynaLantic has the only UH-1H simulator in the U.S. commercial market place.
DynaLantic's Huey II and its AH-1F Cobra simulators are the only ones in the world. To build a comparable Huey II simulator would cost about $ 8 Million and take about two years. A Cobra simulator would take about $15 million and two years.
Another advantage is human: Paul Patin, Bob Catron, and Doug DiMartino. Each has decades of specific skills, knowledge, and networks of contacts. No one can duplicate that combination. Moreover, by being a stone's-throw to US Helicopter and the Aviation Campus of EOCC - and with Fort Rucker a twenty-minute drive away -- DynaLantic is ideally positioned to be part of anything as it evolves. The company is working to cement itself into that fabric.
For example, DynaLantic and the Aviation Campus formed a relationship that will let students use the DynaFlight Training Center to learn simulator maintenance and software development for real-time, man-in-the-loop simulation. The Aviation Campus also asked DynaLantic to serve on the school's Board of Directors.
The DynaLantic story in Ozark ties into some big issues for Alabama moving toward the mid-21st century, as well as to long, historical patterns. The DynaLantic story is an outstanding example of how a very small number of people can make things happen. Paul Patin and his comrades are entrepreneurs, in the best sense of the term.
Alabama's history began with entrepreneurs, has been shaped by them, and will continue to be shaped by them. DynaLantic's story also reflects the long, historical migration of businesses from established, high-cost areas to new, lower-cost ones. The same forces that brought textile and steel industries to Alabama in the 1800s and 1900s and eventually took them away brought DynaLantic to Alabama in the 2000s.
A key factor in bringing DynaLantic to Alabama, as with companies in particularly the automobile industry, is the availability of a workforce with the right skills or at least the ability to develop those skills. In that respect, DynaLantic should remind that the future of Alabama rests in the education of its people - which means sustained, reliable support of education at all levels for people across the age spectrum.
Finally DynaLantic offers an example of how notions of career, working life, and retirement are changing. The three men most important in this story are near or beyond what has been routinely defined as "retirement age." None shows signs of retiring from intense activity in a demanding, intellectually-challenging, business environment. These men represent a quiet, ongoing redefinition of life that is vital to the future success and welfare of Alabama, the nation, and -- through such people's global reach -- the world. See Part I: "Aviation Transformation in Ozark - Window on a New Economic Era in Alabama"
