Aviation Summer Camp

We had a great day today. Our travels brought us to the Lyon’s Air Museum at John Wayne airport and 190 feet above Long Beach Airport.

You will have to check out more of the images on the blog. I found the museum to be a surprise. I expected it to be small in comparison to the other air museums that I have visited. It was small by comparison but the docents who shared their knowledge made for an huge experience in knowledge. We were introduced to Walt and Bob, both pilots in the military. Walt flew in WW2 and  Bob in Vietnam. I think the kids received some combat tips that give them the advantage over me.  ;-) I may be in trouble the next time we fly in the fighter sim.

The Long Beach tower offered another wonderful experience. The exposure they received was a little like drinking from a fire hose but the more they hear the more it will make sense to them. Radio communications, ATC, ATIS, clearance, ground and which tower frequency? Oh My. Then there are the light signals. It was a great view and an equally good experience. Rene was a great host and provided the group with an excellent experience.

Tomorrow we are meeting at California Flight Center for the last time. We will complete a few activities in the morning and complete a walk around by the afternoon. I will also have confirmation from the airport fire department on a demo by their large Oshkosh trucks.

Finally, I would like to offer the opportunity for the kids to take a Young Eagles Flight. If you are interested in allowing this I’d like you to complete the young eagles form. I will have them in the morning but I’ve included a link here if you get the chance to complete them in advance. Young Eagles is a program designed to introduce kids 8-17 to aviation through a flight experience. The program was created by and organized by EAA.  http://www.eaa242.org/YoungEagles/YEreg_form.pdf

Tuesday Aug 16, 2011

We had another good day. The kids again choose to play the game sim today. They did explore the creative side of the game where they created and played customized missions. Not a huge deal to you and me but they enjoyed it.

Wednesday is our day at the park so I will see you at the El Dorado Nature Center. I will be at the entrance so you don’t have to pay to get in. I will be sitting on the park bench at the entrance at 9am. See you there.

I have confirmed for Thursday the control tower tour.

Monday Aug 15, 2011

Just wanted to remind everyone that we are meeting at Millikan in the morning. I’m pretty sure everyone knows that by now. Wednesday we will meet at El Dorado Park. The meeting place will be the Nature center on Spring Street.

Today included a lot of ‘fun’ sim time. The kids really wanted to play 1945 with some time on two other sims. We will spend a little more time on our training sim tomorrow.

Unfortunately, I did not get any photos today. I was amazed at how fast the day went.

Important: Please advise me by email if you will permit me to drive the kids to the Lyons Air Museum in Santa Ana Thursday morning by tomorrow.

Happy Thursday and welcome to Friday. The activities today were slightly more academic in nature. We made a study of the balsa flyers which resulted in calculations of speed. The site has some video of the activity so check it out when you get a chance. I didn’t get many images for today. After spending some time reviewing the parts of a plane and studying those parts we completed a walk-around of a Cessna 172.

A great day today. We started off with a few challenges. Mainly created by me. We survived and managed to get all the needed materials for the day and have a lot of fun. I have to say that the R/C was one of the activities with a lot of interest.

Some of the activities today included:

Turning a plate into a plane. We use a pattern for a styrofoam plane that flew really well. The kids were doubtful but very impressed with the results. Here is a link to  the activity. (http://www.neam.org/education/documents/BuildandFlyaFoamFlyer_002.pdf).

Building and flying balsa rubber band flyers. One of the missing components today were these balsa flyers. Once we had these in hand, we were ready for action. I think someone asked how many times to we wind these things. After getting an answer someone tested that theory and found the limit. Tomorrow we are going to finish the activity with these flyers. A little bit of science and math is on the schedule for tomorrow.

Flying a Night Vapor was fun for most of the kids who were able to do it. Once the winds picked up the light plane was done. Fun while it lasted. I wish we had some pictures of it.

I did manage to have a computer and we did practice more on the R/C simulator. It helped when were were invited to fly some of the larger planes at the R/C park.

The kids logged some time on the playground after lunch. We attempted to fly the light plane again with no luck. A little more time for the R/C sim then clean up and then the short ride to the Nature Center. Good job today.

We had a good day for day one. Today we started with introductions each participant shared a little of their aviation interest/background. Students then selected an aircraft from several books that I have and described what they liked about that particular aircraft. Mikey picked the Hindenburg, Arun picked the F14, Sam and Rishi selected the P86, Orion picked a trainer called the T.35 and Alejandra selected the Mirage 2000 a Delta wing aircraft. It is interesting to hear why they selected the aircraft.

Each of the discussions led to some concept in aviation. We discussed useful load, lift, airspeed, four forces and air pressure related to the concept of lift. We briefly discussed Newton’s third law (every action has an equal and opposite reaction). The four forces discussion led to the idea of acceleration occurs when there is a change in an aircraft’s speed. Subtle but worth noting the relationship between drag and thrust and weight and lift.

After the introductions we gained a short introduction to the simulators in the room and proceeded to have fun and develop  some skills related directly to flying. Specifically, each student is asked to practice holding altitude within a certain parameters as well as constant speed climbs/descents and constant rate climbs/descents.

After some of the students demonstrated their new skills we moved on to completing some questions in the workbook. We were quickly back to the real fun of the day which seems to be Skyfighters 1945.  Here are some of the images from today. I hope that you enjoy them.

We are meeting at Millikan tomorrow and then El Dorado Park on Wednesday. We will gather at the Nature Center off of Spring Street (7550 East Spring Street). I will be there at 8:45. The plan is to meet then we go to the R/C area (acutally behind the Fire Station on Wardlow Ave). We will finish the day at the Nature Center.

Welcome Parents and Campers,

Thank you for signing up for Aviation Summer Camp. Our week begins Monday August 8. Included in this email are some of the specifics for the week. If you have any questions please call or send me an email. I apologize for the lateness of this email but I have been traveling and just got back to Long Beach this morning.

I will comment and provide pictures on my blog of the activities for the week. Please visit the blog at camps. I’ll also send a daily email with some information from the day’s activities.

We are scheduled to be at Millikan for the first two days then we are headed to El Dorado Park on Wednesday to conduct activities in the park and fly the larger radio controlled airplanes. Thursday and Friday will have us at the airport.

This year we have small numbers in both weeks which creates some flexibility and more individual attention. Since some of the kids will be with the camp next week I’m considering a field trip to an aviation museum for the second week to add more variety. All of this with your permission as it will be a driving trip. We have two new aviation museums in Southern California(Santa Monica and Santa Ana).

On Wednesday I have planned two groups to share some information about line fliers and RC flying.

Activities planned for the week include learning to fly the X-Plane simulator, launching bottle rockets, building models, game simulators, R/C planes, and more. The field trip to the airport will be on Thursday. We will spend the day working around planes.

Location (Monday and Tuesday):
Millikan High School
2800 Snowden Ave • Long Beach 90815.
Room 837 (next to the softball field and auditorium)

Location (Wednesday)
El Dorado Park (Meeting at the Nature Center Entrance)
7550 East Spring Street
Long Beach, CA 90815
(562) 570-1745

Location (Thursday and Friday)-To be confirmed
California Flight Center
2601 E. Spring Street
Long Beach, CA 90806
Phone: (562) 490-2662

Looking forward to a great week of aviation with the kids!!

Some 2009 media. I wanted to clean up a portion of the site so that I had  one less link and accounted for each of the years in the blog area. SO…. This link will take you to the page that contains images and video from 2009.

http://uniqueeducationalexperiences.com/ASC/2009Images/WebPage/index.html

Additionally the following link will take you to the rest of the 2009 images.

http://uniqueeducationalexperiences.com/ASC/2009Images/index.html

Enjoy.

Here are some images from Sunday’s Wings, Wheels and Rotors.

The Press-Telegram visited today to take photos and write an article about the camp. Here are some images from today. I’ll post some more information later.