WEST CHAZY — A light snow fell off and on as energy hummed through the pavilion at the Plattsburgh Radio Aero-Modelers’ runway off of Rooney Road last Sunday.
The weather had yet to top 15 degrees fahrenheit, but the excitement of the mixed group of Canadian university students and North Country hobbyist pilots warmed up the day as they set to work on preparing a 10-foot wingspan RC plane for its first flight.
“I love to maiden-fly planes,” said Gary Dumas, recording secretary for the Plattsburgh Radio Aero-Modelers club.
“The excitement, the uh-oh factor. I’m very confident in Leonard and my piloting skills, that we won’t have an issue.”
FLIGHTS GROUNDED
The students who made the plane in question had made the trek down to the aero-modelers’ runway from Montréal, where they attend Polytechnique Montréal and participate in the school’s Avion Cargo Polytechnique group, a student team that designs and builds remote controlled planes to bring to the yearly Society of Automotive Engineers Aero Design Competition.
“It’s what kept me in school, through the period of just online classes,” Emily Cohen, one of the members of the Polytechnique contingent, said of the event.
“I love the application, and the creative thinking. The judges do a really good job creating a ruleset where we’re pointed in a direction with a goal, but there’s so many different options and ways to do it.”
But as the days got closer to the event, the group still had to provide proof of flight videos for the large plane, as well as a smaller, one-pound plane that will drop from the larger one in flight, to demonstrate the aircrafts’ safety, a task made much more difficult when the Model Aeronautics Association of Canada grounded remote controlled planes in the country a few months ago.
“In December we started hearing about issues between the association and the government of Canada,” fellow Polytechnique student Cedric Delorian said.
“From then on, we were keeping an eye on that situation, and gradually got to a point where we had to find an alternative, and that’s when this happened.”
Cohen reached out to the Plattsburgh Radio Aero-Modelers, inquiring about getting help with some test flights stateside, and it didn’t take too much convincing to get club vice president and frequent RC plane pilot Leonard Smart on board.
“This is the most exciting thing, because you have young aviators, whether they want to be engineers or whatever they want to do in aviation or aerospace, that want to do this, and they’re doing this with no help whatsoever,” Smart said.
“They use their own engineering, and craft, they’ve taken a calculator and a slide-rule, doing whatever they can to make this work.”
After a few weeks of planning and emailing to hammer out the details, the students and the Plattsburgh club settled on last Saturday, Feb, 25, as the flight day, before adjusting to Sunday due to weather.
But even just knowing they had their location and pilots for the test flights locked down helped put the students at ease.
“I didn’t know what to expect at all; sometimes places will charge us, sometimes it’ll be like, ‘Oh you can come, but we’re really not happy about it,’” Cohen said.
“When Leonard said, ‘We’re not taking your money, and we’re so happy to have you, and we’ll have a second pilot and make sure everything is kosher within the security limits,’ and just being so supportive, it was a huge relief.”
THE MORNING OF
The weather was slow to warm when the Canadian students arrived at the club’s Rooney Road runway around 8 a.m., but the students and Smart worked diligently to prepare the planes for testing.
After Dumas flew a couple manual flight tests of the smaller plane with a throwing start, it was mounted on the underside of its larger counterpart, and the students waited with bated breath as Smart prepared for takeoff at approximately 11 a.m.
But, as it turns out, they had little to worry about.
The plane had only traveled a few feet before it lifted off the ground, and, although it took some real-time adjustments on his end, Smart was able to circle the experimental plane above the group smoothly.
“I knew it would fly. It has wings, it has a motor, it’s just how well (it flies), and I had to be ready for almost anything,” Smart said.
“The batteries take such a beating when it’s cold, a six-minute flight is actually three minutes, so at the two minute-mark I said, ‘I’m coming back in.”
A mishap as the smaller plane detached in flight led to a more unceremonious landing for it, but the larger plane gracefully touched back down to happy cheers from everyone present.
“The landing was beautiful,” Smart said.
Cohen was a fan of the landing as well.
“Raoul, Cédric and I held hands before our first flight since last year, we crashed during our flight test,” Cohen said. “Personally, I only breathed once we landed. Any experienced RC pilot likes to say that anything can fly, but not everything can land.”
And a couple more flights later in the day after the snow slowed allowed the students to head back north with a sense of confidence.
COMPETITION
With the test flights behind it, the Polytechnique group now prepares to head down to Lakeland, Fla., where the SAE International competition takes place from March 10 to 12.
“The theory and the math is all really important in engineering, but to get to be creative and actually apply all of that is what makes an engineer,” Cohen said.
“It’s my favorite part of the year. Getting to go chat with everyone and go, ‘Oh why’d you choose that? Oh how did you do this?’”
While there will be some turnover from the student design team, many will be returning next academic year, and Smart told the group to be sure to stay in touch, so he could continue to pass down some knowledge.
“I told them today that when you do this again next year, call me, I’ll come up there and give you some tips on building a little stronger, a little better, a little lighter,” Smart said. “But they did a great job.”