“I WANT TO BUILD A COCKPIT” BOY, 12, TELLS HIS PARENTS
This story comes to us from Ruth Gaskovski, who should be one proud mom!
If You Can’t Build a Plane…by Ruth Gaskovski
Our family lives in Southern Ontario, Canada, and my husband and I have been home-educating our children for over fifteen years. Allowing for free, unstructured, and unsupervised time to play and create after schoolwork has been completed, has been an important part of it.
While our youngest twelve-year old son does have some movie time on weekends, he does not have computer access (apart from looking up information) nor does he have a phone. Instead, he enjoys spending his free time exploring the neighbourhood ponds and woods with his friends, going bouldering, or working on creative building projects. Over the last few months, he has developed a keen interest in planes and estimates that he has built around 30 models based on real-life aircraft designs.
When he learned that former Navy test pilot Latham Turner was building an actual airplane with his boy, he was deeply envious. He was also greatly inspired: he knew that he could not build a plane but decided that he would create a replica of the cockpit of an SR 71 Blackbird in our small basement workshop. He watched one video showing the cockpit layout, and I furnished him with the blueprint on paper.
I imagined he might take some plywood, draw some gages on it, and pull up a chair to serve as pilot seat.
Instead, working intently after his schoolwork was done each day, he created this completely independently without adult assistance:
- built the cockpit structure with insulating foam board and lots of hot glue
- replicated each gage with a working wire indicator
- connected eight of the main gages to his rc servos so that they could be controlled
- installed two working screens on which he streams actual flight videos (he bought these and the needed cables at the thrift store with his lawnmowing money)
- built throttle and lever handles
- built a pilot seat complete with a working ejector handle (for which we sacrificed an old office chair)
He now has a complete replica flight simulator in which he can perform simulated take-offs, flights, and landings.
Adds Ruth: In case this might be of interest to your readers: I write together with my husband on the School of the Unconformed substack about navigating daily life in the Machine Age, and offer encouragement and practical guidance to individuals and families who are looking to step away from the virtual and into the real. All posts are free, although some older archived posts are paywalled.
Here are some recent posts that might be of interest:
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