Soaring in STEM

“Let’s build an airplane.”

These words, uttered at a lunch table during January of 2020 at Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, sparked the creation of Flight Club Aerospace, a nonprofit organization composed of high school students from across the Bay Area who share the goal of building an airplane.

In March 2020, Aragon senior Maya Ayoub, the current technical president of Flight Club, heard of the team Instagram advertisement. She brought Flight Club to schools in the San Mateo Union High School District.

The team is building an Ultralight: a single-seat plane that weighs less than 254 pounds and has a top speed of 55 knots.

“It’s basically a really small, really light, really not speedy airplane that can fly in places that aren’t controlled,” Ayoub said. “It gives amateurs the ability to try out being an aerospace engineer. It seemed like the perfect choice for the team.”

Since Flight Club intends to have professional test pilots fly the plane someday, the team follows safety regulations.

“Your regular nuts and bolts at Ace Hardware would crack under half the force that [our plane] would be taking,” Ayoub said. “So our bolts and everything [else] on the plane need to be aircraft certified.”

Generous sponsors help fund the team’s materials.

“We’ve … [branched] out to companies [like] Elroy Air, professors and other amazing people who’ve graciously lended us resources and knowledge,” said junior Harish Selvakumar, software lead of Flight Club.

The team has received a total of $5,000 from Elroy Air and Atkinson, two organizations that support youth STEM education. A large number of donations also come from crowdfunding.

“We reached out to [the] community … and ended up raising $17,000,” Ayoub said.

In addition, sponsors such as Elroy Air and Jump Aero provide the team with mentorship.

“When it comes to development, one challenge is that no design is perfect,” Selvakumar said.

The team gets together on weekends for fabrications days: days when the team works on construction. The team used to hold fabrication days at a member’s garage. But, as the team and the plane grew, they moved to a hanger at the Hayward Executive Airport.

“It gives amateurs the ability to try out being an aerospace engineer”

The hangar is an opportunity for Flight Club to become more official and professional.

“We started out as this 10 person friend group trying to research Ultralights,” Ayoub said. “Now, we’ve become a nonprofit organization in the Bay Area building an Ultralight airplane out of a hangar.”

Although the move changed many things, it did not affect team camaraderie.

“The atmosphere is very relaxed,” Selvakumar said. “Our casual interactions are no different than those between a group of friends. [But], during our meetings and build days, … we work with more dangerous tools, [so] seriousness is crucial. [Flight Club] is amazing fun to be part of and I absolutely adore the community.”

The club has recently accepted 24 high schoolers, making a total of 40 members.

“[The team is] really welcoming to [new members], accepting them, bringing them together and enveloping them [as] part of their community,” said freshman Leah Hawkins, one of the club’s new members.

As new recruits learn more about aerospace, they are excited to contribute meaningfully to the project.

“I look forward to when we get to the final stages of building the plane, refining it, actually being able to fly it and seeing all our hard work pay off,” Hawkins said.

The team has finished the construction of the first wing of the Ultralight and they look forward to starting the construction of the plane’s main body soon.