BY BANR FLETCHER & KYLER DUNHAM

Next school year, South will be the first high school in Kansas to build an airplane and fly it in the aerospace engineering class.

“We are going to be building what is called an RV12,” Mikel Tinich, science, said. “It is a kit plane. Everything is donated to the school by a benefactor, who I cannot say.”

The engineering class will be building a two seater, side by side. It’s an old fashioned stick and rudder. The length is 20 ft long, 30ft wide and about 16 ft tall. 

“During that year, the students that enroll will go through the aerospace curriculum and learn how planes fly and navigate,” Tinich said. “They will also learn about job shadowing and have the opportunity to go up in the plane.”

The vertical stabilizer at the end of the plane will have an eagle on one side and a maverick on the other, to represent the two schools working on it together.

“Anyone who was involved in it will get to fly in the plane that they built and we will be FAA certified,” Tinich said. “The idea is that we will get a second kit plane for the second year and then we will fly this plane during that year.”

Building this plane is going to take both semesters, so anyone who joins, will be getting two Aerospace Engineering credits.