Network of Aerospace Clubs

At AEROFAIR 2015, we want to promote the establishment of Aerospace Clubs (or Aerospace Divisions in Science Clubs) at secondary schools. If we have a good number of schools having Aerospace Clubs in the Pulau Pinang region, we can start building a network of Aerospace Clubs, where the School of Aerospace Engineering USM can serve as an adviser to these clubs, and the Flyoutreach website can serve as a "networking hub" for these clubs.

The Indoor Flight program can serve as a good platform to create initial activities to start-up these Aerospace Clubs. One activity to start with is to keep making better indoor plane models with longer flight times than the record time we have at AEROFAIR 2015. These flights can be recorded in videos and uploaded into YouTube to be shared through our Flyoutreach website with the Aerospace Clubs from other schools.

There is a lot of room for improvement and learning when it comes to making indoor planes. A beginner's design can fly between 1 to at most 3 minutes only. An slightly better beginner' design can fly around 5 minutes or more. Advanced designs commonly seen in competitions at the international levels can fly more than 30 minutes. World record stands at more than 1 hour. So, between a design that flies for 1 minute and a design that flies for 1 hour, there's a lot of science to be learned and techniques to be improved. In short, there is plenty of opportunity here for learning through applications of theory, and through fun activities of course.

In the long run, Indoor Flight is just one of the many interesting activities that Aerospace Engineering can offer. There are definitely other activities such as Water Rockets, Solid-Fuel Rockets, Remote-Control Planes, Hot Air Balloons, and many more. With these myriads of activities, we foresee that Aerospace Clubs at secondary schools are good co-curricular platforms to easily motivate and sustain students' interests into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects.

If your secondary school would like to start an Aerospace Club, or a Science Club with aerospace activities in it, come and join us at the AEROFAIR 2015 program. We can have more discussions about setting up this network of Aerospace Clubs at AEROFAIR 2015 on April 25th.

For the time being, we encourage schools who are interested in establishing an Aerospace Club/Division to start thinking about this possibility, its benefits to students, and how it fits into the new Malaysian educational approach to enhance Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS).

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Participating in AEROFAIR 2015

All secondary schools in Pulau Pinang can apply to participate in this program on the date of the main event: Saturday, April 25th, from 8 am to 5 pm. If your school would like to participate, please read through the approval letter and requirements from Jabatan Pendidikan Pulau Pinang.

AEROFAIR 2015 can accomodate up to 40 teams from secondary schools. Each school can send a maximum of 2 teams to participate. Each team will consist of 5 students and accompanied by 1 teacher. The program is open to all students from Form 1 through Form 5.

The application forms can be downloaded either as WORD or PDF files.

The deadline to send the application form is on Friday, 3 April 2015. We have extended the application deadline to Tuesday, 21 April 2015. The application is now closed as of 17/4/2015 because we have exceeded our target of having 40 teams in the program. We have accepted applications from 42 teams from 26 schools, consisting of 210 students (from Forms 1-5) and 35 teachers.

The application forms can be sent to the School of Aerospace Engineering USM through fax or email. Details of these contact information can be obtained from the application forms.

The AEROFAIR 2015 organizing committee reserves the right to withdraw/cancel any applications if the number of applications exceed 40 teams. In this case, priorities will be given to schools who send their applications the earliest. Priorities will also be given to the first teams of all schools (which means that the applications of the second teams from any schools may have to be cancelled).

We will continuously update this post to list the names of the schools that have sent their application forms to us. The list of the schools and teams accepted into AEROFAIR 2015 will be finalized later, depending on the total number of applications received.

Updated list of schools in Pulau Pinang that will participate in AEROFAIR 2015.
42 teams from 26 schools as of 17/4/2015:

1. SMK Sungai Acheh, Nibong Tebal (2 teams)
2. SMJK Perempuan China, Georgetown (1 team)
3. Penang Free School (1 team)
4. SMK Valdor (2 teams)
5. SMK Seri Balik Pulau (1 team)
6. SMK Seri Nibong, Nibong Tebal (2 teams)
7. SMJK Chung Ling, Georgetown (2 teams)
8. SMK Bukit Mertajam (2 teams)
9. MRSM Kepala Batas (2 teams)
10. SMK Penanti, Bukit Mertajam (2 teams)
11. SMK Permatang Tok Jaya, Butterworth (2 teams)
12. SMK (P) St. George, George Town (2 teams)
13. SMK Kepala Batas (2 teams)
14. SMK Tinggi Bukit Mertajam (2 teams)
15. SMK Tun Hussein Onn, Butterworth (2 teams)
16. SMK Bakti Tasek Gelugor (2 teams)
17. SMK Tasek, Simpang Ampat (1 team)
18. SMK Tunku Abdul Rahman, Nibong Tebal (1 team)
19. SMK Simpang Empat, Simpang Ampat (1 team)
20. SMK Datuk Onn, Butterworth (2 teams)
21. SMK Methodist (M), Nibong Tebal (1 team)
22. SMK Saujana Indah, Nibong Tebal (1 team)
23. SMK Alma, Bukit Mertajam (1 team)
24. SMK Jawi (2 teams)
25. SMK Convent, Bukit Mertajam (1 team)
26. SMKA Al-Mashoor (L), Air Hitam (2 teams)

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AEROFAIR 2015: Objectives & Benefits

Our long term goal is to promote indoor flight to secondary school students so that it can become one of the common co-curricular activities at schools. We believe indoor flight activities can offer many benefits towards promoting science at secondary schools:

1. Motivate self-learning: The process of designing and building indoor planes are relatively easy with the help of many ready-made designs available on the internet, but the process of perfecting the planes to make them flyable is quite challenging because it requires some understanding on aerodynamics and stability. These needs will motivate students to self-learn through resources available on the web.
2. Application of theory: Theory is best learned when it is practiced. Secondary school syllabus does include learning the aerodynamics but without any real and immediate applications. Designing and building indoor planes offer the opportunity to students to experience the working of aerodynamic principles in real life.
3. Cheap materials: Currently, one of the most famous science activities and competitions at the secondary school level is the Lego Robotic Competitions. However, the biggest challenge to scale up these activities to a large number of schools is the expensive price of the Lego kits, which can go up to thousands of Ringgits. On the other hand, from our rough estimates, a single indoor plane can be built with raw materials for less than RM20. This is an exciting prospect to promote and scale up indoor flight activities to school students.
4. Exciting competitions: Indoor flight activities are quite common in many countries with various competitions held at the national levels as well as the international levels. The prospect that students who participate in these activities can compete at the international levels can be very exciting and motivating. We also plan to hold many indoor flight competitions in the future to promote the indoor flight activities.
5. Promoting English: The Indoor Flight activities will also promote the use of using English to learn science. Students will need to use many resources on the internet to learn about the design and building of indoor planes. Most of these resources are written in English.
6. Networking opportunity: One scenario that can increase students’ interest in any type of activity is when they get a chance to get together and meet other students with similar interests from other schools, keeping updates on each other’s progress. In this program, we want to promote the establishment of a network of Aerospace Clubs in secondary schools, initiated with a focus on the indoor flight activities. USM School of Aerospace Engineering and our dedicated website can act as a “networking hub” for these Aerospace Clubs. You can read more about this effort here.

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AEROFAIR 2015: Indoor Flight

To get a glimpse of what Indoor Flight is, you can visit this art of flying at Float Documentary.



Here's another awesome video that documents the hobby in more detail:



Indoor News and Views is a newsletter that contains a huge number of articles and indoor flight designs collected since the 1960s. Indoor Model Specialties, on the other hand, is a website that specializes in providing tools and supplies related to indoor flight.

You can also learn more about Indoor Flight through the links below:

1. A short introduction and some videos and tutorials on indoor flight.
2. Indoor Flight workshop in AEROFAIR 2014.
3. Our tutorial video on how to make a simple indoor plane.
4. Our manual on how to build a simple indoor plane.
5. More detailed tips to build an indoor plane by Chuck Markos.
6. Indoor Flight Competition in AEROFAIR 2014.

IMPROVING INDOOR FLIGHT WORKSHOP:
To improve on the Indoor Flight activity that we have done in AEROFAIR 2014, we are going to make some major changes on how we conduct the AEROFAIR 2015 program, especially the workshop sessions.

The first major change is that we are going to conduct both the workshop and the competition in one full day event, instead of the 2 separate half-day events in 2014. This change is a result of many comments from our participants last year that they want a longer session on the workshop to be able to build indoor planes that can actually fly at the end of the workshop. So, for this year's program, we are making the workshop session longer, and topping up with a competition at the end to excite things up! The goal of the competition is very simple: to fly the longest. The world record for time of flight reaches over 1 hour. But for our competition at the beginner's level, the maximum flight time is expected to be 2-3 minutes only.

The second major change is that we are going to organize a more interactive and focused workshop. To do this, the workshop will be run by about 20 teams of facilitators (consisting of our USM staffs and students), each assisting a small group of 2 participant teams. In this way, each participant teams can interact more closely with our facilitators to guide them in learning and building their own indoor planes until completion. Each of the participant team will consist of 5 school students accompanied by 1 teacher.

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