Aerospace professor Eric Paton’s lifelong dream was to build an airplane — he figured that he would have to wait until retirement to do it. In June, Paton’s dream took flight earlier than expected with the launch of the student-built airplane, named Velma, at the San Luis Obispo Regional Airport.
“We rolled down the runway and accelerated up to rotation speed, just pulled the stick back and hoped that it would fly and she did,” Paton said. “Took right off the ground. Leapt off the ground. It was extremely powerful, and we climbed and climbed and climbed as high as we could, well until we got up to like 8,000 feet.”
Paton’s class, AERO 471, involved a fifteen month long project of building an airplane from a RANS Aircraft plane building kit. Teams of students were assigned a specific part of the plane to construct and once the construction was complete, the project involved testing for safety. Paton takes on fifteen students per quarter.
“For lack of a better term, some people call it a giant lego set essentially,” aerospace engineering senior Isai Villanueva said.
“Velma” is a high wing tail dragger and can seat two people, according to Paton. Paton described the construction of Velma as an amazing team building exercise.
“Some of the students didn’t even know how to operate a drill to begin with and by the end it was like knocking rivets in at high speed,” Paton said.“I had some students that were extremely passionate about the whole project and they wanted to be involved the entire build, beginning to end.”
Villanueva worked on the wheels and contributed to the windows and control services of the plane. He said a cool part of the project was working in the airport hangar and meeting the community there. The launch was a proud moment for him as someone who worked on the stability of the plane.
“It made me really proud just to see ‘Oh wow it actually works to some degree,” Villanueva said. “But of course with trial and error, we will see how the true efforts of our work were. We’ll see what issues might arise from the design of the airplane itself.”
Paton currently flies the plane, which he owns, and invites his students to fly with him, including aerospace engineering senior Edison Carroll. They flew the plane without the doors, marking Carroll’s first time flying this way.
“As soon as he pushes in the throttle and increases power in takeoff, a rush of air just starts moving by and I’m basically trying to hold the camera in place,” Carroll said. “Feeling the amount of wind just hit my face was a huge shock for me. It really is just an experience I never had before. I’m not sure how else I could say it.”
Carroll is a pilot and during his first year told his friend it would be super cool to build a plane for his senior project. With his pilot license he wanted to learn more about the design process and assembly of planes.
Carroll worked on the vertical tail, the wings, landing gear, fuel tanks, the engines and the doors. He was also involved in running the test program and did work outside of the school year during the summer.
During the first flight, he had a hand held radio and he tuned in to the San Luis Obispo tower frequency. Carroll said hearing the enthusiasm and seeing the plane take off for the first time was mindblowing.
“The plane took off in three hundred feet and seeing it already off the ground by the time it came into view, I was confident that what I made was safe, but I was still surprised a little bit when I saw the plane take off,” Carroll said. “I’m like ‘Whoa it’s airborne.’”
This year in AERO 471, Paton is leading a project to construct a second plane, a two seater low wing with tricycle gear. Paton’s father, Neil Paton, owns the hangar the class is operating out of and works with Eric Paton to oversee the class.
Paton said this plane will be basically 100% student built.
“I feel much more confident teaching it and I know every aspect of the overall workings of how to do this, so I feel really good letting students do everything and be comfortable with jumping in the airplane and flying it at the end of the day when it’s done,” Paton said.
This story was updated to show images of the correct plane, Velma.
