Students from Aston University Engineering Academy are progressing well with their school’s build a plane project as part of the Air Leagues Project Slingshot.

The Air Leagues programme will give young people practical, hands-on experience in aviation manufacture and flight. Working outside of formal learning environments, this programme will support groups of young people to deliver a complete aircraft, thereby developing practical skills in engineering, project management and teamwork. Project Slingshot aircraft will deliver a legacy beyond the initial build programme, with each completed aircraft planned to deliver many years of flying for cadets, other youth groups and Air League scholars.

Project Slingshot uniquely focuses on a professional build standard delivered by actively mentored young people, through drawing upon expertise within the RAF Sport Aircraft charitable organisation, industry, the Light Aircraft Association and core programme partners.

Each project will employ an innovative distributed build, with for instance the empennage, wings and fuselage being built at different locations within a region. Teams will come together for final assembly and ideally build sections in rotation, in order to maximise the impact of the project. This very much mimics the way in which aircraft are built by major manufacturers.

The Aston University Engineering Academy’s students first task is to construct the empennage for a Sling2 light aircraft, with their work being carried out at RAF Cosford who have generously provided workshop facilities.

The Cosford RAF Museum has also allowed us to use the MBCC paint shop to spray all the components with anti-corrosion primer. The students will soon be moving on to the next task which will be to build the fuselage.

Find out more below:
https://www.airleague.co.uk/project-slingshot/