All eight of the students got to take breaks in the form of airplane rides today, and the weather cooperated beautifully. (I’m told that “when it’s nice here, it’s really nice.” With scattered to broken clouds at 10,000 feet, nearly unlimited visibility, and temps in the 70s, “really nice” seems about right.)

Glasair’s Chris Strachan with a happy Brandon Stripling after an airplane ride.

Glasair’s Chris Strachan split the flying duties with Build a Plane President Lyn Freeman. Strachan, who is director of marketing and sales, took his passengers up in a jazzy red-and-black Sportsman sporting oversize tundra tires. Freeman flew the Build a Plane flagship, a bright-red Sportsman that four teens helped to build a few years ago.

Brandon Stripling, who hails from Minnesota, has flown before as he has completed a private pilot ground school course taught by instructor Dan Lutgen. Climbing out of the red and black Sportsman, Brandon was asked how he liked it. An ear-to-ear smile was his answer.

“It was awesome,” he said. “That’s a great plane.” Brandon had spent much of day one placing rivets and had enjoyed it quite a bit, but, he said, “Nothing beats flying an airplane.”

John Deslauriers, also from Minnesota, is a student pilot and so had brought his logbook in the hopes of getting a fresh entry. He got one after flying with Freeman.

Build a Plane’s Lyn Freeman signs John Deslauriers’ logbook.

Interestingly, the team from Saline, Mich., had been enrolled in a computer assisted design class and do not have the same frame of reference about aviation. (By the end of two weeks, of course, they’ll be pretty darn familiar with the airplane they helped to build.) That hasn’t stopped them from taking airplane rides. For Julia Garner, today marked her first ride in a small general aviation airplane and only her second airplane ride ever. Her first was on Sunday when she flew out to Washington state with the rest of her team.

Lycoming IO-390 engine is mounted in the Build a Plane aircraft.

While their colleagues slipped out one at a time for an aerial break, the rest of the kids worked diligently on their airframes. By 4 p.m., an engine had been mounted in the GAMA/Build a Plane ship. A twin of that Lycoming IO-390 was removed from a gigantic box and likely will be getting its baffling tomorrow. At the rate these kids are going, the Two Weeks to Taxi program may have to change its name.

Canby High School Principal Bob Slaba (in blue) is a student pilot.

Slaba is not standing on the sidelines. He’s a student pilot with about 25 hours logged, and he freely credits Dan Lutgen’s passion for aviation as a primary reason why he found himself learning to fly. He soloed in May, and hopes to take his checkride on Aug. 1. So the opportunity to immerse himself in the actual construction of an airplane has been a valuable learning experience for him, as he sees the airplane take shape in front of him. He’s also extremely busy documenting the build for his school’s website.

 He’s obviously a supporter of Saline’s aviation ground school class, but not just because he caught the flying bug. “We have to have kids doing things in life, learning something and having a goal,” he said.

Slaba is proud of the students who have completed Canby’s program and gone on to become private pilots. Soon he’ll join their ranks.

Can they build an entire airplane in two weeks? Build a Plane is betting they can.

If you’re in aviation, you’ve probably heard that phrase before—particularly if you did an accelerated rating or a type rating. Today I heard that phrase applied to the process of building an airplane.

“Building an airplane” and “drinking from the firehose” are generally not concepts that you hear in the same conversation, but when you consider that we’re talking about assembling an Experimental kit in two weeks, it all makes sense.

The kids who took their first deep drink from the firehose today are eight teenagers from high schools in Michigan and Minnesota. They are the winners of an aviation design contest sponsored by Build a Plane and the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. School’s out, and they’re here in Arlington, Wash., to spend some quality time with fiberglas, rivets, and bucking bars.

The day began at 7 a.m. with a briefing at Glasair’s Customer Assembly Center at Arlington Airport. (We should all have hangars this immaculate and organized. Talk about a place for everything and everything in its place!) By the first morning break, the students had begun mounting rudders and installing rudder cables, and mounting the main landing gear and tires. In another corner, fuel lines were being threaded along a wing.

Glasair’s Two Weeks to Taxi program has several years under its belt, and the level of preparation that goes into it is evident. To the casual observer, today looked a little like “organized chaos,” as one observer put it—but it was also apparent that a lot of progress was made. That’s good, because the plan is to get the first of the two airplanes ready to taxi on Wednesday, June 26, and an FAA inspection on Saturday, June 29.

Will they make it? Stay tuned as I post updates from Arlington and the progress of the Build a Plane/GAMA projects.

Two unusual landings. School children at Brevard Elementary School in North Carolina got quite a show when a Cessna 182 made an emergency landing on their soccer field, reports the Rocky Mount Telegram. The children at Chairville Elementary School in Medford, Pa., got a similar thrill when a Marine CH-46E helicopter landed at their school, reports PhillyBurbs.com.

Good thing no one was home. A pilot was forced to make an emergency landing right at the door of a home in Eatonville, Wash., reports Q13FOX.com.  The pilot said he was trying to avoid a rain squall.

Any landing is a good landing.  The pilot of a Beechcraft BE55 was forced to do a belly landing at John Wayne Airport reports the Newport Beach Patch. The pilot was was uninjured, but the airport was forced to close a runway for about an hour.

Drugs and rock ‘n roll? I’m shocked (not)! The original members of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath recently admitted that during their heyday in the 1970s they had cocaine flown to them via private planes, reports The List.

We’ll end the week with this new Embraer video — Legacy 500 – “The Unbelievable” – starring action star and company ambassador Jackie Chan. Enjoy!

The kids won the challenge by creating an airplane design and test flying a virtual airplane. Lest you think these kids simply plugged some numbers into a program, they went through a monthlong curriculum to get to the design portion. And the software recorded parameters such as time, distance,  fuel efficiency, and more. And their designs were judged and analyzed by a team of aviation engineers.

I thought you’d like to see what these students came up with. Here’s Saline’s design. Can you guess which Experimental airplane served as the inspiration? Extra points if you can name the exact model of that Experimental:

and a view from the cockpit:

And here is Canby’s design:

It’ll be fun to see how these kids bridge the gap from the virtual world to the physical process of assembling an airplane. I’ll be there for the first part of the two-week build to bring you the action, and I might even get a chance to do some riveting myself.  Look for more blogs on Reporting Points, plus an article in a future issue of AOPA Pilot.

Maybe a catching a ride on a different private jet might have been wise. Costa Rica’s President Laura Chinchilla has found herself in hot water after taking trips to Venezuela and Peru on the private jet of Gabriel Morales Fallon, a Colombian who is suspected to be linked to drug trafficking, reports the Raw Story. She blamed the flight on a “chain of lapses.”

Somebody needs to write a check.  The Australian Maritime Safety Authority says two hoax rescue calls cost $20,000 and wasted resources, reports the Herald Sun.  The first call was about an aircraft crashing off the coast of Perth, while call two was about a pilot crashing into a tree.

Let’s go to the video tape! A botanist who experienced a serious leg injury during research had to be rescued by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s helicopter crew, reports LA Observed. One of the helicopter’s crew recorded the rescue.

It’s always good when you can walk away.  And 84-year-old pilot walked away with minor injuries after an emergency landing of his Cessna 170, reports Livermore Patch.  Another pilot survived after his Tiger Moth biplane crashed just short of the runway at Lyden Airport, reports KBOI-TV.

Here’s a novel way to save your crops from frost!  Canadian apple farmer Phil Lyall paid a helicopter to fly over his grove of 10,000 trees to keep temperatures above freezing during a recent cold snap, reports the Telegraph.  He told the CBC that he could have lost 10 percent of his harvest if temperatures fell below 32 degrees F.

He went from high to low.  Police in Albuquerque, N.M., arrested Steven Acton at Double Eagle Airport after being caught with 41 lbs of very high-grade marijuana, reports KOB-TV.  The drugs were valued at $205,000.

Bison vs. helicopters. As soon as Montana’s Department of Livestock began its annual bison-hazing operations west of Yellowstone National Park using helicopters, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies asked for a temporary injunction to stop the practice, reports the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

That toy could have done some damage.  The FBI questioned a Chinese student studying in the U.S. after he crashed a radio-controlled airplane near the Public Service Electric & Gas Bridgeport Harbor Generating Station, reports UPI.  After asking to retrieve his plane, a security guard said no and called the FBI.