Sikorsky Australia’s Plane Simple will take off again during 2023!
Coordinated by volunteers from the Alkath Group, 11 high schools from the Shoalhaven and Illawarra will compete to design a paper plane, to travel the furthest distance and stay the longest in the air, on August 17th at the Shoalhaven Indoor Sports Centre.
FLYING HIGH WITH STEM
Our region has enormous potential for your students to take up careers in the aviation industry, so our aim is to help further engage your students with science, technology, engineering and maths in a fun and collaborative way.
The Sikorsky Australia’s Plane Simple Challenge aims to enable teamwork, creativity and problem solving whilst being an incredibly enjoyable way to learn a little bit about aviation and potential future career paths open to students.
HOW IT WORKS
By either using an online template or creating your own designs, build your own paper planes and test the prototypes to determine the best ones.
Once your best entrants are identified at school, the finalists from each school can then compete against other students from the Shoalhaven and Illawarra.
WHO CAN ENTER?
Group 1: Year 6 primary school students
Group 2: Years 7, 8 and 9
Group 3: Years 10, 11 and 12
Group 4: Tertiary students including higher education and vocational education and training (VET).
THE CATEGORIES ( Each school can enter up to two teams in the following categories at the finals.)
Distance
For the distance category, each team must throw their paper plane whilst spotters record distances in metres. All distances must be measured from the start line to the point where the plane first touches the ground (not the final resting place if it slides). Each student has up to three chances to get their best distance.
Time-in-Air
For the time-in-air category, each team must attempt to keep their plane in flight for the longest time, whilst spotters record each flight attempt with an accurate digital stopwatch. Report the time accurately e.g. 2.45 seconds. Each student has up to three chances to get their longest flight time.
For further details on how to get involved, please contact Julia Guy via Email: jguy@alkath.group or by Phone: 0412 395 047.
Proudly Sponsored by Sikorsky Australia, Alkath Group, Aerospace Training Services (A QinetiQ Company), Qinetiq AirAffairs, Stormtech, 1300apprentice and Workplace Learning Illawarra, Shoalhaven, South Coast and Southern Highlands. All sponsorship goes directly to the winning school’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) programs.
With support from the Nowra Show Society, Illawarra and Shoalhaven Regional Defence Network, University of Wollongong – Industry 4.0 Hub and the Shoalhaven City Council, Sikorsky Australia’s Plane Simple 2023 is a great example of a community collaboration encouraging young people to take up careers in aviation.