STEM attends RAF Cosford
On 9th June the CAA STEM Programme attended the RAF Cosford Airshow to continue our commitments in creating awareness to all things aviation and aerospace. Located in the hangar at RAF Cosford, Colin Greenwood, Jordan Bridge, Christopher Gorton, Dale Harrison and Mitchell Blei engaged with hundreds of visitors enjoying some flight coding, paper plane flying and even getting on the main stage to speak live to camera about careers in aviation.
Feedback from one of our volunteers:
The STEM hangar was very busy from beginning to end of the show, unless something noisy was flying outside! We had children of all ages trying their luck on the ‘fly a paper plane through the hoops’ challenge. Others had a try of the ‘My First Flight’ programmable aircraft exercise, a few made unscheduled landings on water, but the majority succeeded in taking off and landing on the runways, ably assisted by Mitchell in the setting up of their aircraft flight paths.
There was also some interest in the working model of a jet engine we had on display, and it was great to talk about how engines work, as well as listen to stories from those who had spent their lives working on such engines. Something I did notice was the large number of female cadets attending the show, an exciting prospect of continuing to increase gender equality within aviation engineering in the future.
My main takeaway from the show was the many smiles I saw on our stand, and throughout the STEM hangar, a great measure of success for all who gave up their weekends to take part in this event.