By Quan Nguyen,
Caution- the first paragraph is more about engineering in schools, so skip to the second paragraph if you’re more interested in the safety report. We had a great International Drone Day this month, and I want to thank everyone who helped out, including Karl, Brad, and Eric for helping direct traffic in the morning. I had the pleasure of helping out with the AMA’s UAS4STEM competition. The event is participated by youths, and designed to encourage students to get their feet wet with engineering. I think it’s critical for all students to have a chance to be exposed to software and electrical engineering. As a practicing engineer, I’ve had to deal with a shortage of engineering talent over the past few years, especially with software engineering. Despite the rising enrollment numbers into engineering programs at universities, it takes more than a four year crash course at a university to become a productive engineer. The earlier students become acquainted with design and software programming concepts, the more ready they will be to enter the workforce when they graduate. There is an insatiable, global demand for this kind of talent, and I think producing high quality, ready-to-be-employed engineers right out of college is the best way to put millennials to work.
Now back to safety. Nothing earth shattering at our field lately. Just a few isolated incidents that were handled by your crack board of directors. Bak brought to my attention an injury he sustained last weekend while flying at another flying site in North County. Apparently, he was hit by a plane that had landed, then blown airborne again by a gust of wind, with the prop spinning. The picture of his injury is too bloody to be shown on this newsletter, so I’ll leave it out (He toughed it out and was flying again the next day). This is just a reminder to be careful and not let that incident happen here at our field.
When you fly on the north edge of the runway, make sure you’re flying in the right direction. 95% of the time, that will be flying Westbound. I was involved in a mid-air not too long ago with Scott’s A6, so I know what happens when I fly in the wrong direction!
Best,
-Quan
