Take Flight
It is remarkable to see multiple sub-assemblies come together and begin to resemble a part of a plane, at least if you use your imagination. Our students, teachers, and mentors are busy every day, finding new ways to solve problems and taking it one rivet at a time.
Today, one group was making great progress on the cockpit area of the fuselage.
Another group got creative when they needed to produce more torque. They found a pipe and used it to increase the force on a vice while working on the longerons.
Dave Marcy
I am a retired Aerospace Engineer (Boeing, GE Aircraft Engines, Fairchild-Dornier) who also has FAA Airframe and Powerplant Licenses. Have been involved in large commercial aircraft analytics last 40+ years. Hobbies are fly-fishing, woodworking and traditional wooden boat building. It has been enjoyable working with the students and seeing them learn both collaboration and technical skills.
John McCarthy
My name is John McCarthy and I joined the LHS plane-build mentor group this past September. I’ve had a long-standing interest in aviation, starting shortly after college when I pursued a private pilot’s license and flew for a number of years before family commitments grounded me.
In terms of my background, I am married and my wife and I share 4 adult children and 9 grandchildren. We currently live in Plymouth, NH, with our rescue dog, Max. I have a BS degree in Accounting/Finance and an MBA. For about the first 20 years of my career, I worked for a MA based semiconductor manufacturer in the Accounting organization. I later shifted gears and spent the next 20 years leading enterprise-wide software implementations for organizations as diverse as UNICEF, the U. S. Navy, and Harley-Davidson.
My current hobbies include sculling, sailing, and woodworking. This past year I built an 18-foot cedar wood strip wherry which I frequently row on Newfound Lake. I have often dreamed of getting current again with my pilot’s license and possibly flying a plane built out of my garage. I see this mentorship program as an opportunity to both work with some very talented students and to attain some insights into my next adventure in aviation.
Dave Robinson
I joined the Take Flight mentor group when my wife, Bonnie, asked me to take charge of organizing the parts inventory. It’s all sorted and stored in a large closet in the hangar. Now I put together kits of parts as the teams need them to complete a certain section of the assembly process. After graduating Union College with a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, I went to work for Jones & Lamson in Springfield, Vermont in 1979. I was part of a 3-person team designing a microprocessor-based control system for a metal-turning machine tool lathe. In 1984 I took a job with start-up Creonics in Lebanon designing digital servo motion controls, a new product at the time. In 1994, after Creonics was acquired by a large multinational industrial controls company, I left and co-founded (with the previous president of Creonics) Admotec Inc. in Lebanon to build and sell resolvers and magnetic encoders (angle and speed sensing devices). The resolvers were based on a new design by our partners in Switzerland and I designed the magnetic encoders. After that company got acquired in 2008, I founded Admotec Precision LLC in my basement where I continue to sell the resolvers produced by our Swiss partners. These are used on many commercial aircraft around the world and we have accumulated over 38 million flight hours for our products. I enjoy working with the students and helping them to acquire the skills necessary for a future in engineering.
