Runway 34 at McChord Air Force Base in Washington state is visible through the wrap-around windshield $27M df the C-17 Globemaster III.

Between the banks of green lights on the cargo carrier, pines appear off to the right of the blacktop runway, which is flanked by fall grass. Off to the left is the control tower and some hangars.

Seated behind the two pilots at a touch-screen console, Michael H. Guerrera has god-like powers, courtesy of Boeing's $27 million flight simulator at Hickam Air Force Base.

"I can rain on them, I can hail on them. Can you hear the hail?" he says as he makes the flight's weather take a turn for the worse.

Suddenly, another airplane appears in the distance.

"He won't hit you. He's at 500 (feet). That's a C-130 Hercules," the Mililani Mauka man tells the pilots.

The simulator, which dips and turns and sometimes careens on six black spidery legs, is housed in a 46-foot-tall room at Hickam Air Force Base.

It will be used for quarterly training of active-duty Air Force and Hawai'i Air National Guard pilots who fly real C-17s.

Guerrera, 39, a Saint Louis High graduate, has a unique perspective on the simulator. He's a Boeing simulator instructor pilot and a C-17 pilot with the Hawai'i Air National Guard.

"It's the most realistic simulator that I've ever flown, and we're able to log some of our (flight) requirements in the simulator," he said.

Pilots fly in the simulator about 80 hours before they get in the real cockpit. Air National Guard pilots who made the switch from flying propeller-driven C-130 Hercules to the newly-arriving jet-powered C-17s received their simulator training at bases such as Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma.

The Hickam simulator, which will be turned over to the Air Force on Feb. 28, is now going through certification and evaluation.

Larry Leonard, the Boeing site manager, said 15 civilians work on the simulator, and a Boeing field service detachment helps support the aircraft due to begin arriving, about one every three weeks, starting tomorrow.

A variety of landing strips are programmed into the simulator from satellite imagery, so a pilot can know what it's like to land at Balad Airfield in Iraq or Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan without actually having been there.

One of the active-duty pilots, flying into Charleston Air Force Base in a simulator, noticed his own house on approach.

Even bumps in the runway are programmed in while taxiing.

The simulator replicates conditions best experienced where there won't be the potential for an actual catastrophic ending, like a malfunctioning engine.

"It's all choreographed, in the sense that if I lost an engine on one side of the airplane, not only would there be lights and indicators, but also associated pull on the good side and drag on the bad side," Guerrera said.

Pilots will have to spend two days a quarter and three hours a day in the simulator.

A former Navy P-3 Orion flyer, Guerrera, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Guard, taught at Maryknoll School and Chaminade University. Now he does his teaching in the Boeing simulator.

"I get to combine two things I really like, which are flying and teaching," he said.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.