The General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) has named the team from Cheektowaga, New York’s Erie 1 BOCES Harkness Career and Technical Center as the winner of its annual high school Aviation Design Challenge. Second place was awarded to a team from Raisbeck Aviation High School in Tukwila, Washington. According to GAMA, more than 65 high school teams representing 28 states participated in the 2022 challenge.
Good to see that young people are still interested in light aircraft design. Did they actually build and fly their designs? A large-scale R/C plane is not that hard to make and would give realistic results. The computer can only approximate reality. The picture here shows the reality of aeronautical engineering - despite all the attention the past half century paid to promote the career to young ladies, it remains largely the domain of men. Instead of wasting all the money for scholarships, special programs, societies, etc. aimed at the select group, the weaker sex, we should recognize that men and women are wired from conception differently. There haven’t been impediments to women flying or designing aircraft in maybe a century, yet various groups keep pursuing the irrational ideas of DEI. Equal opportunities does not equate to equal outcomes. Men and women are different, God planned it that way.
“the weaker sex”, and “There haven’t been impediments to women flying or designing aircraft in maybe a century”. Those two phrases alone exhibit exactly the kind of impediments women have encountered, and continue to encounter, in flying and designing aircraft, and in pursuing countless other opportunities for which they are qualified, if only folks like you would get the heck out of their way.