The Ponca City Aviation Foundation in partnership with the Ponca City Regional Airport wish to announce their Northern Oklahoma Flight Academy (NOFA) for 2021. This one-week summer day-camp for middle school and high school students is planned for two sessions-5 days in early June (June 7-11) and then 4 days in late June 2021 (June 22-25).

The week in early June will be for experienced former NOFA students (age 14 or older) who have enrolled in NOFA sponsored actual pilot flying lessons. These lessons will be conducted at the Ponca City Airport using contract airplanes and instructor pilots. Each lesson will be scheduled as a one-on-one flight lesson with a federally certified instructor pilot in a federally certified aircraft. Students will be able to log this flight time as credit toward their own federal pilot certificate at some future date.

The week in late June is for all other younger or less experienced students and is a more nearly conventional summer camp. That portion will be structured as an 60-40 remote/in-person camp centered at the Ponca City Regional Airport. The 60% portion will be using Zoom software from each student’s home and the 40% portion will be outdoors at the airport and using pandemic approved procedures.

This camp will consist of 4 “classes” or curricula of middle school and high school students. The anticipated 28 students will be divided into 3 “groups” of 6 students depending upon their flight academy experience and their school grade level next fall attending June 21-25 plus 2 groups of 5 students each enrolled in flying lessons attending June 7-11.

Groups 1-3 will receive project boxes containing camp and project materials. The boxes will contain such things as model rocket kits, model aircraft kits, fastener kits, electrical concepts kits, kite kits, Spacecraft Simulator software and how-to book let, and several dvds with kit build-videos and instructions about the camp and connecting via zoom to their group’s teaching team at the airport. There will be 3 teaching teams at separated locations in the classroom/meeting building at the airport. Each teaching team will consist of 2 experienced classroom teachers and 1 student aide who is a former NOFA student. The student aide’s primary duty is to operate the Zoom sotware and cameras for a realistic experience for the students so the teachers can concentrate on helping the students to learn about and enjoy flight.

The Zoom sessions will be conducted Tuesday through Thursday and will begin each day at 9 am and continue throughout the day until 3 pm. Monday is reserved for scheduled airplane rides at the airport for returning students. Airplane rides will probably need to be scheduled throughout the entire week depending upon airplane and student availability and weather. Friday is reserved for rocket launches at the airport.

The Zoom sessions will be structured with formal discussions and demos for each group at the beginning and end of each day. Other special sessions during the day may be instructional demonstrations of techniques of building a particular kit or may be entertaining or motivational pretty much like past in-person camps. We hope to have jet pilots with their flight gear from Vance AFB and the medical life flight helicopter crew come to show and tell. Others will be scheduled closer to the time. We also plan on other people with some specialty in flight to come (airline pilots, A&P mechanics, air traffic controllers, and etc).

The Zoom sessions will also include live realistic interactive demonstrations of an instrument approach in bad weather on a computer airplane simulator by a staff member, a spacecraft simulator launch and moon trip followed by a landing on the moon by a staff member (hopefully without incident), and several short interactive instructional sessions by student aides on such topics as “How an airplane flies,” “How do spacecraft fly?”, “Our Solar System” (with great actual photos of planets), and etc. More as time permits.

The zoom software will be up all day during class hours and the training teams will be on-duty all day. Teachers will have periods of real-time instruction on various aspects of “flight” just as they did in person in years past. During breaks, students can call in for special help via telephone or Zoom or if necessary can come to the airport (one at a time) for hands-on help if they have transportation. Some Zoom sessions will include all students (and a parent or friend) such as a kite building session where they all build their kites within about an hour and then go outside or to the park and fly them. The training team may call the students on the telephone during breaks just to check on how they are doing and to see if they need any help (kids may be reluctant to ask for help). Teachers may even designate periods of time in which they do personal help.

It is hoped to have optional airplane rides during this camp for these same students. Local licensed pilots will volunteer their time and aircraft for airplane rides. Students will come to the airport (wearing their NOFA T-shirts for snapshots) and fly one or two at a time by appointment. They will remain outdoors with pandemic rules in effect. The airplane ride is considered “outdoors” (a lower risk Covid environment) by some authorities due to maximum aircraft venting in warm weather (almost no small aircraft are air conditioned). The venting is very effect at flying airspeeds and constant forward motion. Aircraft will automatically be widely separated on the large ramp (at least Covid distance) due to wingspan. Families/drivers are invited to stay for the airplane rides. Each family will be assigned a picnic table under the clubhouse awning for the duration of their student’s airplane ride.

Students will also come to the airport at the end of the week (in NOFA T-shirts) to fire their completed model rocket kits. They will come one group at a time (6 students), remain outdoors at all times, and adhere to pandemic safety rules at all times. They and their family will again be assigned their own picnic table under the clubhouse awning. NOFA staff will prepare rocket launchers etc ahead of their arrival so that students can have minimum exposure to other students or the staff. Most staff members will be vaccinated so pose a minimum threat to anyone. Younger students probably will not have the vaccine by then, hence the need for Covid procedures. After rocket firing, the students will receive a graduation certificate, a 2021 star, a treat and then go home.