I am a student at Sutton
District High School, who decided to take the experimental course of Aerospace
Manufacturing. This course allows the students to build an airplane, bought as a kit
from Murphy Aircraft Manufacturing Limited. Along with the building of the plane, we
learn the physics that apply to airplanes in general. The physics is taught as a
separate course, however no student can take just one of these courses. The physics
of flight course is taught for forty-five minutes immediately before we go down to the
Aerospace class, which we are then in for seventy-five minutes. When we successfully
complete these courses, we will have two grade twelve technological credits and one grader
twelve technological science credit.
Having the physics of flight course has helped me personally with understanding some of the reason for building the plane the way we are. For example, in the physics course, I learned about the different types of forces that can bend and tear the aluminum. I then took this new knowledge to Aerospace Manufacturing and I understood why I had to reinforce certain parts of the wing, which is what I am helping to construct.
In the class, there are only eleven people. This works well because we still have room to work around each other. Three people work on the back fuselage, three on the front fuselage, three on the left wing and myself and one other on the right wing. Having a small class also helps in the learning of the physics. It helps because the teacher will have more time to help each individual, unlike they would if the class was a standard twenty-five to thirty people.
One of the best things about this class, as in most grade twelve classes, is that everyone wants to be there. No one is there to "fly" through the course. Of course we still have fun while building the plane. We occasionally have visitors in to look over our progress, as we continue to work hard on the plane.
Our class is so excited about getting the plane finished, that we work on it one day a week, for two hours, after dinner. We originally started to work on it two days a week, immediately after school, but not enough people could make it. During our exam week, we also worked on the plane one full day and any other time while we were waiting to write our exams.
The only problem in the class is that if we screw up even a little bit, we have to buy a brand new part. This becomes very expensive, but as we continue to build the plane we make even fewer mistakes than we did in the beginning, which I might add, were not very many.
One of the reasons we have so few people in the class is because it takes a lot of hard work each and every day of class. Most people like to work hard one day and like to relax the next day in the same class. If it was acceptable would not need a whole year to build the plane. I don't say this to scare any potential student away from the course, but because I would like to let everyone know how hard we work to complete this project we took upon ourselves. The thing that keeps me excited about building this plane is that there is something new each day. Once I finish one part of the wing, there is always something more challenging to do next. This is what I like, the challenge, I get to see how much I can accomplish and how much of the challenge I can take. The best thought I have about the entire course, is that one day, what we are building, will be able to do what we, as humans, cannot physically do ourselves. FLY!
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