Future aviation engineers at Duxford!

Duxford Air Museum has a long history of reaching out to and involving schools in understanding not only the history of aircraft, but also the science behind it.

It was inspiring to see the latest project being launched this morning in the American Air Museum space, getting children to focus on the technology that went into the B29 Superfortress, the WWII USAAF bomber, as a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) module. The children put together a pretty big model of a B29, unphased by the media attention (see pic). The module itself involves them not only building the model, but also understanding the technology thinking that went into the construction of the planes, and the plan is to roll this out to 2,000 children in its first year. (Its already half subscribed, within two weeks of telling schools about it.)

Although children come from as far as North Yorkshire, Kent and even from Holland to visit the museum, this project will also go out to the schools (taking the model plane with it) as well. Boeing Corporation, that made the planes at Kansas in the 1940s, is funding the project. 

I also took the chance to catch up with the museum about their traffic plans for the big 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain event in September. By making it ADVANCE TICKET only, it will give the airfield better control and information over the numbers of vehicles attending, which seems very sensible, and helps address the issue of people parking in local residential streets.