Model Airplanes

Two Federal Way students recently attended a remote school in Nagappatinam, India that was established to provide an education to children who were some distance away from government schools.

The Rotary Club built the school after the 2004 Indonesian tsunami devastated the area, but the building remained empty and unused for some years. Vidyarambam, a non-profit organization, saw a need, worked with the proper authorities and established a school for children from 3 years of age to the sixth grade.

Devin Cole, a seventh grade student at Sacajawea Middle School and Jessica Lam, a recent graduate of Federal Way Public Academy, taught a class about airplanes.

Cole defined in detail the parts of an airplane, using a Lego airplane as a model. He completed his demo by having the students build paper airplanes.  Boeing posters, brochures and other airplane material were donated to the school’s library.

Lam said the trip was the chance of a lifetime for her and she received an offer to come back and work summers in India as the children attend school almost year-round. Lam is currently attending Highline College and studying early childhood education.

To read more about the students’ teaching experience, visit their blog.

For information about Vidyarambam, visit www.vidyarambam.org.

Article source: http://www.federalwaymirror.com/community/275834151.html

OXFORD — The scene at the Waterbury-Oxford Airport on Monday was typical of a weekday afternoon: A smattering of single-engine planes lined of the compact runway; a few took off at near 20-minute intervals.

But at the end of the runway, pushed up against the expansive field bordering the airport, sat — rather hovered — a nearly 70-year-old, four-engine, 37,000-pound bomber named Aluminum Overcast. Its grandiose, yellow-tipped propellers, red tail and wings and metallic silver paint glistened under the day’s strong sun.

The Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress is on a three-day visit to Greater Danbury as part of a year-round tour of the country.

The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) made it a mission to keep one of the 12 known intact B-17s available for the public to experience. The company offers ground tours of the heavy bomber and 25-minute flights, coupled with briefing on the historic aircraft.

On Monday, Oxford hosted the first flight of the year at its airport, which, fortunately, was provided a near cloudless sky.

Manning the controls was Lorraine Morris, a United Airlines commercial pilot of 25 years, in her first year flying B-17s.

“I fly United to make money and I fly the B-17 on my days off,” Morris said. “It’s an honor to fly this plane.”

She cited the plane’s storied history as a bomber in Europe during World War II as a reason to join the Wisconsin-based company.

The B-17, introduced in 1938, was sent to England during the war for eight-hour bombing missions over Germany. However, possibly its most well-known

Article source: http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Taking-to-the-sky-on-vintage-wings-5757762.php

Rick Bowmer/ AP photo

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a spybot! The cops! A package from Amazon! Or one of a growing number of uses for nonmilitary drones, those small, remote-controlled flying machines increasingly hovering overhead.

How do you feel about eyes in the sky? Should they be banned? Welcomed? Restricted? The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), whose task it is to create civilian drone use policy, will issue new drone regulations a year from now, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a radical, a liberal, a conservative, or a libertarian, there’s bound to be something in those rules that will induce outrage.

Paul Voss, an associate professor in engineering at Smith College, doesn’t think the FAA ought to regulate what landowners fly at low altitudes over their own property. Meanwhile, several towns in Colorado—an open carry state—are toying with resolutions that would allow gun owners to blast drones from the sky. America’s skies are about to become a battleground that will rekindle thorny debates over private property, government power, commerce, security, privacy, liability, and the social implications of technology.

Who Owns the Skies?

The crux of the issue lies in the above question, posed by UCLA law professor Stuart Banner in an eponymous 2008 book. What’s your answer? Everybody? Nobody? Try neither, and lay the blame at the feet of the Wright brothers. Their modest 120-foot flight in 1903 captured the imaginations

Article source: http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=18156

We have 3D printed keys, guns and shoes — now
a research team at the University of Virginia has created a 3D
printed UAV drone for the Department of Defense.

In the works for three years, the aircraft, no bigger than a
remote-controlled plane, can carry a 1.5-pound payload. If it
crashes or needs a design tweak for a new mission, another one can
be printed out in a little more than a day, for just $2,500
(£1533). It’s made with off-the-shelf parts and has an Android
phone for a brain.

“We weren’t sure you could make anything lightweight and strong
enough to fly,” says David Sheffler, who led the project. Sheffler
is a former engineer for Pratt Whitney and Rolls-Royce who
now teaches at the university. After he created a 3D printed jet
engine in one of his classes, the MITRE Corporation, a DoD
contractor, asked him to create a 3D printed UAV that could be
easily modified and built with readily available parts.

The first prototype, the orange and blue model seen in the video
above, was based on a conventional radio-controlled (RC) aircraft
made of balsa wood, which is much lighter and stronger than the ABS
plastic used in the university’s 3D printers. The same plane made
of plastic would have weighed five times as much as the wood
version. “You’re printing out of a material that’s really not
well-suited to making an airplane,” Sheffler explains. On top

Article source: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-09/17/military-grade-drone