By Mark Wiencek, EAA 96072
Here is an update about EAA Chapter 977, located in Lake City, Florida, on Cannon Creek Airpark (15FL). Although we have had great success with our Young Eagles rallies, we wanted to leverage our heated and air-conditioned chapter hangar for something more. We decided to try our hand at EAA Young Eagles Workshops.
We have conducted two workshops to date. Our first was on June 8, the second on September 14. The workshops were spearheaded by our Young Eagles coordinators Nancy Marquis and April Sedlak, and I’m happy to report that both were a huge success.
Each one-day workshop took place on a Saturday morning. Preregistered students and their parents were invited to be in place by 8:30 a.m., with the formal workshop starting at 9 a.m. We kept the curriculum the same for both of these sessions to learn the ropes as to what worked and what didn’t with the kids. Between 15 and 20 students were preregistered for each workshop. We had a target timeframe of four hours, including a short break where drinks and snacks were provided. Each seminar was to last 30 minutes with a signal to change to the next seminar station. Kids were given colored name tags to keep the groups together during this change. We arranged our hangar into five areas, a waiting area for parents, and then four hands-on seminar areas.
The four workshop seminars included Aviation Theory, in which the students learned the basics of aerodynamics, aircraft design, and operation; Electric Basics had each student constructing a light and buzzer circuit board including a chance to send Morse code messages; Wood Aircraft Construction, which gave each student the opportunity to construct their own wood wing rib teaching design theory, gussets, and gluing; and Sheet Metal Basics, which saw each student construct a metal cell phone holder or name tag using both driven and pulled rivets. Each seminar was designed to provide the kids with a tangible reminder of their effort that they can take home with them which taught a skill used in aircraft construction.
Everyone involved in this effort, from the planners, instructors, students, and parents, agreed this was a fun and exciting event. The entire morning passed before anyone knew it. Many of the parents in attendance commented that they wished they could be students themselves, and in fact during the second workshop, we allowed a few parents to try their hand at making a wing rib themselves.
We will be hosting more workshops in the future with a goal to have two per year. We are busy planning the next one, including designing some new seminars to teach new skills to our future builders.