ISU engineers of all disciplines are looking for ways to put their learning to practical use by joining a student group that aspires to build its own working airplane.

Kate Martinek, AirISU club project director and senior in aerospace engineering, said the goal is a real-world application of what students have learned so far, and describes it as a labor of love.

“Three years ago, our founders just got some of their friends together and started building this thing, and the aerospace department loved the idea,” she said. “You get a lot of experience, and it’s interesting to see how everything fits together.”

AirISU consists of about 20 students whose long-term goal is to design and build a Zodiac XL airplane and fly it to Oshkosh AirVenture 2008, a weeklong festival held in Oshkosh, Wis. Last year, there were approximately 750,000 people attending with 10,000 homebuilt airplanes on display.

The group’s current progress toward that goal is looking good, Martinek said.

“We have the exterior design done, and now we’re taking a look at interior design – structure, placement of circuitry and gears, things like that,” Martinek said.

The group receives its materials and money from donations from companies who take an interest in the project. Recently, it received a kit plane, in which most of the parts of the plane are premade and only require assembly, from Zenith Aircraft Company.

“I’d say that the kit plane we got is worth somewhere from $5,000 to $7,000, so that’s a big help in terms of money and time saved,” said Brian Campbell. Campbell and Mark Ketcham, both seniors in aerospace engineering, are the two students leading the actual construction on the plane.

“We have set times to work on it with everyone twice a week, and then we tinker on it on our own sometimes,” Ketcham said.

However, with the turnover rate forced by graduating students, it can be slightly intimidating for the new people to catch up with the veterans.

“Well, our founders got us a long way through the design phase, but then they all graduated at once and took all of their knowledge and contacts with them,” Martinek said. “Most of our group are pretty young, so it’s pretty hard to teach a bunch of people, ‘here’s how you do that.'”

Certainly, one could understand the motivation of this group when it will have an actual airplane at the end to keep and show for it.

But there are enough liability issues involved throughout the whole project that no one really knows what will happen to the plane when it is finished.

“The problem is, the typical definition of ‘control’ of something like this is if an individual builds 51 percent of it, they control it, but so many different hands have touched this project that it’s hard to tell who counts as the individual,” Ketcham said.

To the group, however, the top priority is focusing on its task, because it faces the ownership issue often. Nearly all of its money and materials are from donations, and the department has loaned it the use of a few basement labs in Howe Hall to meet and work on the plane.

“Before here [Howe Hall], we were working out of a hangar at the airport. That wasn’t good. It was far away and we were being charged a lot for a big space that we didn’t need all of,” Campbell said. “But this is nice, we can bring students here easily to work on the plane.”

Despite all the past and current complications, Martinek and her crew are still working toward their goal.

“I realize that a year and a half sounds optimistic since we have a lot of fresh blood, and our ultimate goal isn’t flight,” Martinek said. “I mean, that’d be nice, but this is basically for the general public; a learning experience not just for us, but everyone around us.”