2007 TSA Flight Competition

In the late winter months, the Technology Students Association, TSA, holds their Regional competitive events in many technology related fields.  The competition is conducted at both Middle School and High School levels.  Again this year, the Region 8 competition was held at the Park Forest Middle School.  The State College Radio-Control Club, SCRC has been fortunate to be invited to judge both the Middle School, Flight Challenge, and High School, Flight Endurance, events.

The Flight Challenge competition required students to build their gliders prior to the day of the competition.  The gliders had to be designed, documented, constructed and tested to meet a set of specifications provided by TSA.  The models were launched using a TSA provided launcher powered with a rubber band.  Flight times in this event were very short with the longer flights lasting only several seconds.

The Flight Endurance contestants were required to build, document, and test a rubber powered model to be flown indoors.  They had to meet a very stringent set of rules and design criteria set fourth by TSA.  When flown, the models were required to take-off from the ground and fly as long as possible.  Extra points were awarded to those planes that landed on their wheels.  Each contestant had two flights.  The flight times were added to form their total flight time.  Many of the individual flights exceeded one minute.

The judging was done by three SCRC members, Al Niessner, George Gurney, and Henry Margusity assisted by two graduate students from the Penn State Aero Space Department., Brian Geiger and James Ross.

The following photographs show scenes prior to the flying in the gym where the flight competition took place.

As usual, the full size picture can be viewed by clicking on the thumbnail photo on this page.

Henry and George judging the models and their documentation while Brian and James are waiting to time the flights	Here we can see the large number of balsa gliders that were entered in the Flight Challenge competition	This view gives a better idea of the balsa gliders design and construction
The judging crew looks like they are enjoying their work. This is a good view on one of the high school Flight Endurance aircraft.	Two of the high scool Flight Endurance contestants checking out their airplanes while waiting for the flying to start.	There was al lot of activity in the gym prior to the start of flying. Note the racr car setup on the far side of the gym
Practice was allowed prior to the official flights. Note the catapult used to launch the balsa glider.	Several more of the Flight Endurance airplanes. There is always many last minute questions.