February 5th 2015, the Arvada Associated Modelers Club attended Legacy High School; in particular Mr. Godman’s aviation class. The class was made up of approximately 15 high school boys who are interested in aviation. On display we had numerous foam fixed-wing aircraft, a gyro copter, a quad-copter and a large scale aerobatics 28 lb. airplane. In addition Joe Falconer brought his hexacopter with a 3 axis gimbal and live feed camera.
ed started us off talking about the club and promoting our flight instruction. The class gathered around the large scale aircraft that Ted brought. The students asked relevant and thoughtful questions about Ted’s aircraft. We discussed how the plane works, the amount of electronics on board and approximate costs. He tied it into AAM’s training program and the students seemed very interested. Pat then talked about his aircraft and showed the functionality of his foam aircraft. There were a lot of questions for Pat about how much his aircraft cost and how hard it was to fly. Dewey then told everyone about his scratch built gyro-copter and explained how stable the design was. Finally Joe explained his hexacopter and how the 3 axis gimbal works along with an explanation of the future of UAS. A lot of questions revolved around cost.
Once we were done with the conversation portion of the demo we went to the gymnasium to demonstrate the capabilities of the multi-rotors. Pat went first and showed how stable his multi-rotor was indoors. Apparently if you can get the quad to use your head as a reference point it will follow you around as you walk. The students seemed to enjoy the demo that Pat gave. Joe was next to fly his hexacopter. He explained how he needed to calibrate the compass then gave a student a remote to control the camera. He also brought FPV equipment so the video signal was transmitted to a monitor the students could see. In addition Joe brought a pair of FatShark FPV goggles and the students took turns looking through the goggles.
The flight portion was uneventful and the students seemed to be enjoying themselves. Multiple people asked about the flight instruction that AAM offers. We expect we will see some of them at the field in the near future.
