Aircraft club takes off

School of Aeronautics gathering builds infrastructure as partnerships form

A remote controlled (RC) aircraft club has been spreading its wings since the fall semester of 2014, aiming to reach out to the kids of Central Virginia. It started with an idea to bring aviation to young people without strapping them in a twin-engine turbofan aircraft. Rather, the idea was to size it down to something kids could actually fly.

When the idea became reality, the club started out by instructing Liberty students on the basics of flying RC aircraft and ensuring that there were enough instructors for the number of kids they were planning on working with. Chris Cartwright, a Liberty flight instructor who has been overseeing the club since its inception, spoke of the opportunities presented to Liberty students and kids in the area.

“LU Remote Control Airplane Club (LU RC) is a student-led club of the School of Aeronautics,” Cartwright said. “The goal of LU RC is to provide Liberty students with the opportunity to earn CSER while learning how to build, fly and teach others how to fly RC airplanes. After learning how to fly, Liberty students are provided the opportunity to build mentoring relationships with kids in the community while teaching them how to build and fly model airplanes.”

Cartwright said that, while they plan to reach out to kids across the region through local partnerships, the club is still in the pre-flight stages, not yet ready to take-off and fly on its own.

“We are currently building those relationships while we are training our own Liberty students to be able to teach,” Cartwright said. “We’re in the infrastructure building phase from last semester to this semester, because it is a very new club. As far as (working with kids) is concerned, that is going to be in the not too distant future.”

According to Sterling Cairns, president of the RC aircraft club, Liberty student Matt Reynolds started the idea. When he brought up the idea to New Covenant Schools in Lynchburg, they were originally cautious about it. Once he worked with elementary and middle school kids, the school quickly embraced it.

Once the school communicated it liked the idea, Reynolds brought the model to the School of Aeronautics. According to Cartwright, “they’ve been running with it ever since.”

Once the School of Aeronautics established an official club, Cartwright, along with club leadership, talked to HumanKind, a nonprofit organization in Central Virginia, about forming partnerships with the kids HumanKind already works with. Though they had no facilities for their aircraft and equipment, HumanKind decided to change that.

“They offered for us to use some horse stables that are on the property,” Cartwright said. “They are no longer doing anything equestrian related with the stables.

However, they are not planning to get rid of the stables. They offered for us to use the facilities free of charge to be our RC airplane club workshop where kids could learn to build and fly RC aircraft.”

With facilities free of charge and a large field to operate the aircraft, Cairns remains optimistic for the future.

“To see it in the future is to have competitions where we can take Liberty to RC competitions to put their name out there and to definitely grow the CSER side of it as much as we physically, possibly can,” Cairns said. “In the next two to three years, I could definitely see us working with a lot of kids from the Salvation Army and children’s homes and a ton of other places.”

Cairns emphasized that, while he would like to see the club grow and compete, he remains committed to the original goal.

“It’s all about the relationships,” Cairns said. “We have people in the community … (that are) trying to help us build this program. That’s honestly what it’s truly all about — the relationships with these kids, showing them Jesus through all of this, that Jesus is behind all this, especially in the world of aviation.”

Even though the club remains in the building stages, the leaders and students who have put time and effort into building the program remain optimistic that bonds will form and kids will be able to spend time flying planes and learning about Christ. According to Cairns, that is what started the program and will continue to grow it well into the future.

VAN DYk is the news editor.