31 Jul 2019
During the holidays, I enjoyed a weeklong camp at the Brisbane AYAF (Australian Youth Aerospace Forum) University of Queensland to learn about aerospace engineering. We started off with an activity where we built gliders out of balsa wood and flew them with varying degrees of success. After that we had a tour of the university where we saw their wind tunnels, car workshop, and my personal favourite the UQ space workshop where we were able to see the rocket Athena, that won the 10,000 ft challenge.
The next day we built model rockets that would fly as high as possible and keep a single egg safe. We then travelled over to the Queensland museum to see the ‘NASA: a Human Adventure’ exhibit, which held many different items from the history of spaceflight, both Russian and American. We launched our rockets, half of them failed in spectacular “eggsplosions”. There was a careers day where we had a plenty of companies talk about their workplaces, such as Boeing, UQ Space, Air Force, and Griffith University. The next day we made the trip to Griffith University and we participated in a flight simulator, and drone quidditch. Each activity had its own difficulties especially with flying a virtual Boeing 737.
The next day we went on some industry visits where we were able to see Airbus A380s during their maintenance, some massive engines up close.
The last day we went to the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) base Amberley where we saw a number of growlers take off as they were doing an exercise that day. At the end of this amazing visit we were able to look inside a C-17 troop transport. In the end I made lots of friends and connections and had the most amazing week of my life.
Pearce Gourlay
