That wing tester in the video is pretty clever. Did you design it?

Thanks contactflying for the encouragement.

tcj wrote:That wing tester in the video is pretty clever. Did you design it?

No, we bought it but it's something that's could be built.

Here is a short little video of our students practicing their approaches and landings at the local airfied, Hemet-Ryan (KHMT). My school hired my friend (the adult in the video) as a consultant to help out with the club. He is a CFII, retired fish and game pilot, A&P mechanic, retired military helicopter pilot, lot of experience, etc. We are developing a couple more projects to help further inspire our students.

http://sjvaaviation.com

The next couple of week's our students will be learning about airfoils, basic structural wing design, and construction. My friend and I built an 8 foot wing that can be deconstructed and constructed multiple times. We chose to build a wing with an aspect ratio of 4:1 to give it a larger feel than a traditional model airplane and it is actually slightly smaller than a half scale RV3. We kept the airfoil and numbers simple for ease of construction as it is our first go at this. Pending on how well this is received we may add a fuselage, tail section, and conventional landing gear. I'll post up more photos and video when the students get their hands on it.

That's awesome!

We hosted my son's kindergarten class in my shop where I'm building my RV-7. I bought the Vans tool box practice kit and did some prep work before the field trip. All of the kids got to use the pneumatic squeezer to dimple at least a half dozen holes and rivets. There were a couple of girls that really wanted to do more, so they each did at least a dozen rivets

Something else I had fun with was I had the control surface practice kit that I did for myself, my tungsten bucking bar, and a scale. I asked the kids which they thought was heavier, and 100% of them picked the section of control surface. I would then put each on the scale. the control surface was somewhere just over 400 grams, and the bucking bar was somewhere around 750. They were all shocked when they got to pick up the bucking bar

1:1 Scale wrote:That's awesome!

We hosted my son's kindergarten class in my shop where I'm building my RV-7. I bought the Vans tool box practice kit and did some prep work before the field trip. All of the kids got to use the pneumatic squeezer to dimple at least a half dozen holes and rivets. There were a couple of girls that really wanted to do more, so they each did at least a dozen rivets

Something else I had fun with was I had the control surface practice kit that I did for myself, my tungsten bucking bar, and a scale. I asked the kids which they thought was heavier, and 100% of them picked the section of control surface. I would then put each on the scale. the control surface was somewhere just over 400 grams, and the bucking bar was somewhere around 750. They were all shocked when they got to pick up the bucking bar

Sounds like a great experience for both you and the little guys.

My friend and I introducedthe wing, we discussed the different components for about 40 minutes. The 6th and 7th grade students had a lot of questions and were excited. Next week we wil construct and deconstruct the wing.

We had our first group of students take a go at the wing construction. Went well as they were engaged and seemed retain the terminology of the few components of the wing structure.

1 minute time lapse video I put to together.




http://sjvaaviation.com

I love this thread! Thanks for sharing the stoke, here and in your classroom.

Good video. I liked the time laps photography. Not too fast, not to slow. Reminds me of my beginning

Keep on, keeping on it!

So I'm looking for some suggestions. I have about $1000 to spend on books/dvds for my aviation club/class and was wondering what would be some good titles, curriculum, documentaries to help inspire and teach my students about the wide field of aviation. I know about the other threads regarding great aviation reads and will also refer to those posts.

So if you were in my position how would you spend this money to help further develop the passion for aviation (middle/high school age students)?

Do you have a 60" Monitor, Chromcast (Google thin client) and a fast internet connection? The amount of aviation videos on the Internet is staggering. Good to watch and get stoked!

8GCBC wrote:Do you have a 60" Monitor, Chromcast (Google thin client) and a fast internet connection? The amount of aviation videos on the Internet is staggering. Good to watch and get stoked!

We have a smartboard which provides a large video display, good sound, and fast wifi. I've used and shared many of the awesome videos posted on here and other locations. I should fire up the big rocks and long props series to get the backcountry fire going even more.

Adding to the roughly half scale wing we built, we add a fuselage. Nothing special just more hands on teaching opportunities to help inspire the next generation with aviation. I wasn't sure how the students would respond to this project/activity but they have been excited and engaged. The next step will be to add the empennage and then have the students do various measurements and calculations like wingspan, aspect ratio, mock wing loading, etc.

https://sjvaaviation.com/

We finally finished the tail section and completed the project building roughly a half scale RV3 look alike. The tail section got a little sloppy but overall served the purpose to continue to inspire the next generation..... hopefully!

Quick update on some of the progress we've made to bring aviation to the public high school level. At the start of the fall term we launched an Aviation 101 course with 20 students. Its been an amazing opportunity to expose students to the world of aviation and to open their eyes to the various career fields and post secondary educational opportunities in aviation. In this year long course students will cover the private pilot knowledge content in preparation to pass the written exam. In addition, we have incorporated an Advanced Aviation Training Devices (Precision Flight Controls) to the classroom environment to start training some of our students in preparation for actual flight lessons and solo flight.

If you are still interested in what we are doing you can check out our website here: https://sjvaaviation.com/

Thanks for letting me share the progress we have made to hopefully inspire the next generation of aviators.

This is great! I’ve been doing Young Eagles for a little while now, and I think hit around 35 kids this past weekend. I’ve been looking for ways to incorporate some more aviation with my own kids’ schools, and this gives me some ideas. We got pretty lucky in that they incorporate STEM all the way down to Kindergarten, including robotics courses, and they do an aviation day which involves K-6 at this particular pair of schools.

Where did you source the panel components for the X-Plane sim? I would love to do something like that.

Of course what I really want to do is start a kit build, and involve the kids in that somehow. I need to talk to the principal and get his take. I’ve been leaning towards a Xenos-B kit anyway, and that would be well within the skill set of any of these kids. I was skeptical on that part until EAA this year, when my 5 and 8 year old kids were bucking rivets quite well at Kidventure. We spent almost two days in there just letting them go nuts with airplane stuff.

I'm part of a group that teaches aviation as a stem program( http://wmawf.org/ ) in 5 local schools as an afternoon program. We have a spring session for middle schools and a fall session for high school. We also have our own simulator. Today, the kids go to tour an Army National Guard unit that fly Blackhawks for air medical evac. The blackhawk we saw has a full glass panel and advanced flight controls that will let it hover and fly itself. They had everything lit up and Kids got to play with the controls . Very cool!
Pete

colopilot wrote:
Where did you source the panel components for the X-Plane sim? I would love to do something like that.

Here is a link to the pannel: http://www.mypilotstore.com/mypilotstore/sep/9439