Alpha Bravo Charlie Case Study

An FT STEM Exemplar School

Maiden Video

To the FliteTest Community,

As most of you are aware now, our program was asked by FliteTest to take on a challenge to develop the next prop slot jet for the FT community.  The students answered the call by developing a solution that involved three different aircraft with interchangeable main wings.  In a collaborative effort a handful of students worked everyday during class and even lunch times for roughly three weeks before Bixler came to evaluate the product. With a helping hand, the students started their initial planning by conducting research on what FliteTest currently has in terms of prop slot jets and what the FT community would like.

This model of researching first stems from our FT STEM Engineering and Design model intended for high school use, however, we thought it was appropriate to use for this situation.

Once the group had finished with their research and identified a handful of possible solutions they decided to present three possible solutions to the table, the Alpha Bravo Charlie concept was the one most liked. With that decided, the kids broke out into groups to begin the task of designing the aircraft on CAD for rapid prototyping and production. The three main students that took credit for the designs worked together to create the Alpha, based on our MF-35 Lightning design you see below;

Once the group had finished the Alpha design, the three broke up into subgroups and grabbed some additional help to develop the other two aircraft, the Bravo and Charlie. The three main contributors from design to testing was the trio of girls we had assigned, they were labeled the Case Study team, just as important as the main three, they too were involved with the product pitch to Bixler. We have had a history of girls leading the group in the past, and this year we have another group of girls carrying on the tradition. Here is last years group of all star girls.

The girls had to work quick and take note of any flaws they saw in the design and build to correct before Bixler came and to share to him as feedback to what to look out for in the product prior to delivering to the FT community.

Delaney was in charge of the Alpha!

Stucky was in charge of the Bravo!

Jill was in charge of the Charlie

To date the project has sparked a lot more attention then would could ever imagine and it is even supporting the funding of other FT STEM schools start up across the nation. See this forum for more the build from you guys!

http://forum.flitetest.com/showthread.php?31487-*Unofficial*-Alpha-Bravo-Charlie&highlight=alpha 

A huge thanks goes out to Josh Bixler and team for allowing this to happen, the marketing team, Dan for all the wonderful plan drawings to communicate out to all of you, and all of you that have purchased the product to date! You guys are awesome! Thank you for your support over the years, it brought this great opportunity to our students this year and we can't wait to see what is in store for us and others like us in the future.

For those of you who just heard about this and want to try it out, see link below.

https://store.flitetest.com/stem-series/