Aerofair 2015: Indoor Flight Workshop

For the AEROFAIR 2015 Workshop Session, we have prepared a short manual on how to build an indoor plane for the beginner's level. The aim of this manual is to provide simple instructions and tips to guide students in building their indoor planes. This manual will be used to support our 3-hour Workshop Session. At the end of the workshop, our goal is to have the participants be able to produce a flyable indoor plane. The Flying Competition will be conducted afterward in the afternoon session.

Because of short duration of the workshop, we will focus on building just one design of the indoor plane, the beginner's level Double Whammy design by Chuck Markos (you can check its flight video here and here).

This design is suitable for beginners and can fly up to 2 – 3 minutes. More details about it can be read in the National Free Flight Society website.

An improved version of the Double Whammy design is the Penny Plane design with a flight time of more than 5 minutes, but require more time to build, and therefore is not suitable for our short workshop. You can see its flight video here Normal indoor planes competing at international levels are designed to fly for more than 30 minutes, and the world record for a single flight is recorded at more than 1 hour.

In order to build a good indoor plane, several design aspects need to be carefully looked after. One important design aspect is on the aerodynamic aspect to ensure that the plane can produce lift and stable during flight. Another consideration is to make it able to fly in a circle so that it does not crash into the walls of the closed environment.

SHORT MANUAL
You can download the PDF version of the manual here: "A Short Manual on Indoor Plane Design". The manual consists of the following sections:

1. Introduction: Brief introduction on indoor planes.
2. Beginner's Indoor Plane Design: "Double Whammy".
3. Materials: Materials to be used in the workshop.
4. Team Arrangement: How to arrange a team of 5 students in the workshop.
5. Important Design Issues: Main design issues to make it fly upward and stable while flying in a circle.
6. Schematic Diagrams of an Indoor Plane Design: Schematic CAD designs of an indoor plane from different angles.

For the teams competing in AEROFAIR 2015, please read through the manual before coming to the workshop so that we can make maximize the workshop time to actually build and fly the indoor planes. If possible, please print a copy of this manual to the AEROFAIR 2015 Workshop session.

PROGRAM BRIEFING
At the beginning of the workshop in the morning, we will give a 15-minute briefing on the process involved to build an indoor plane. In the briefing, we will inform participants on:

1. Safety Issues: Especially on using cutting knives and 3-second glues.
2. Team Arrangement: Each team will assign four separate roles to the members. The four roles are for members to build four different parts: fuselage, wing, tail, and propeller
3. Building Parts: We will provide 4 main stations for each part to be built: fuselage, wing, tail, and propeller.
4. Assembly: Each team will start to assemble the four finished parts to build a complete indoor plane.
5. Flight Test: Once the plane is fully constructed, teams will test their planes.
6. Improvement: During the flight test, teams need improve their planes to maximize their flight time.

TEAM ARRANGEMENT
For the AEROFAIR 2015 Indoor Flight competition, students will be grouped into teams of 5 students per team. Before the competition, each team will go through a 3-hour workshop to learn, build, and test their plane. Because of the relatively short duration of the workshop, we assign the following 4 roles for the students in each team to take:

1. (Team Leader) Fuselage and Assembly: One student is needed to build the fuselage. This student will also be responsible to understand and supervise the entire process of assembling all parts to make the complete indoor plane. We recommend this student to be the leader of the group because he/she will oversee the overall assembly process.
2. Wing: Two students are needed to build the wing. We recommend that one student is assigned to cut the balsa woods and another to glue the woods onto the wing skin (plastic wrapper). Building the wing is a very delicate process and we recommend students to be extra careful in all the steps involved, including building the two posts to attach the wing to the fuselage. The wing is the part that takes up the most time to build, between 1 to 1½ hour.
3. Tail: One student is needed to build the tail. This student must also take the responsibility to understand the concept of stabilizing flight by using a tail to produce a downward force.
4. Propeller: One student is needed to build two or three propellers for the single indoor plane that the team will build. The reason is that, in our experience, the propeller can easily break if the propeller or the propeller attachment system on the fuselage are not properly constructed. This student should also understand the technique to launch the plane.

For the rules and regulations of the Indoor Flight Competition, please visit this page for more details.

Read more...

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).

Read more...

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)

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...