Flight Club UK After School Program

The following synopsis goes along with the theme for my new website domain name when I updated my website from Scienceguy.org to Ideas-inspire.com.  From a construction article on my website for a rubber powered model airplane constructed mainly from thin foam sheet I named the “Fantastic Foam Flyer” I gave someone in another part of the world the inspiration to start a model airplane club known as Flight Club.  Check out the website here: http://flightclubrc.net/index.php/category/school-club/

Flight Club Member building foam gliders

First Gliders

In the beginning they would build a glider version influenced by my rubber powered design and then later add rubber power through propellers to their foam airplanes.

Glider Flying

Jon Kemm teaches STEM and computing in the ancient town of Rye, East Sussex in the UK. Like me Jon also flies RC slope gliders and RC electric model airplanes. The free flight aspect is somewhat new to Jon but he is catching on fast and so are his students.  He has documented much of the club activities on a website that contains a series of flight reports which include pictures and video. Jon often contributes to the Facebook page I had started known as “Simple Foam Free Flight Airplane” https://www.facebook.com/groups/425811714235246/






In watching the videos it appeared that when the progression to rubber powered models occurred, some of the models were stalling after launch or did not have enough power climb. Ronnie Espolt from the Victor Valley RC Flyers Club in the USA has built the foam planes with student groups also and provided suggestions over the Internet too.  As the weeks progressed the improvement in the flights did too.   Ronnie had come up with the idea for a postal contest for the rubber powered foam planes, contest rules appear on my website at http://ideas-inspire.com/postal-contests/. Jon’s club intends to enter the contest that is running this month, a postal contest you record flight times at your location and send them in.



It is interesting to note finding the supplies differs throughout the world. In the USA most people are building these airplanes using the common foam plates found at every grocery store while these are hard to find elsewhere and the foam known as “depron” is ordered to build the airplanes.


  The best news came in a message from Jon today:
“The head of STEM wants us to build foam plate flyers with the year 6 students arriving in sept. I've been asked to order materials for 60 models.
Spreading the joy of model flying!”

Update 5/31/2016 from Jon Kemm

Jon Kemm created another report in the form of End of the Easter Term Email

One highlight is they have been invited to write an article for a national model magazine called Aeromodeller. 




Bill Kuhl
http://www.ideas-inspire.com