The Wisconsin Flying Team is a competitive subgroup within Badger Aviators. It was founded in 2013 with the generous help of Mr. Paul Valenstein, a University of North Dakota graduate with a degree in Air Traffic Control, who currently serves as our coach. We compete with colleges and universities across the nation under the guidelines of National Intercollegiate Flying Association (NIFA).
First and foremost, everyone is welcomed, pilots and non-pilots alike!
We as a team practice weekly to ready ourselves for yearly regional and national competitions (if we qualify for it). For pilots, it is a great way to hone your piloting skills as well as building lasting friendships with a bunch of talented individuals. For non-pilots, it is a fantastic way to buildup aeronautical knowledge and will pave a very smooth path should you choose to pursue your pilot's certificates.
All competitions are affiliated with and administered by the National Intercollegiate Flying Association (NIFA). Competition events are as follows:
1. Ground Events
Feel free to contact Remington Viney or Luke Burlingame for questions.
We as a team practice weekly to ready ourselves for yearly regional and national competitions (if we qualify for it). For pilots, it is a great way to hone your piloting skills as well as building lasting friendships with a bunch of talented individuals. For non-pilots, it is a fantastic way to buildup aeronautical knowledge and will pave a very smooth path should you choose to pursue your pilot's certificates.
All competitions are affiliated with and administered by the National Intercollegiate Flying Association (NIFA). Competition events are as follows:
1. Ground Events
- Computer Accuracy (CompAcc) - It involves calculations such as true air speed, Mach number, fuel burn, etc.
- SCAN - The SCAN test is very similar to flight plannings and is especially beneficial if you are preparing for your FAA private pilot written exam.
- Aircraft Recognition - Contestants will be shown a slide show of aircraft pictures and attempt to identify them by their manufacturer, model number, and name.
- Preflight inspection - A NIFA authorized mechanic will bug a perfectly fine airplane and each contestant will need to find as many bugs as possible within a fifteen minute time limit. The purpose of this is to drive each pilot to become more detail oriented and systematic, both skills could be applied to fields other than aviation.
- Pattern work and precision landing - Landings are perhaps the trickiest part of flying an airplane. Therefore, being able to smoothly land an airplane in all circumstances require lots of training and excellent airmenship. Landings tested include power-on and power-off.
- Navigation - Even though sophisticated navigation systems are easily accessible to today's pilots, the ability to navigate with sectional maps is a fundamental skill that all pilots are expected to master. Therefore, such an event exist precisely for that reason.
- Message drop - As it sounds, your copilot will attempt to drop a metal bar into a designated field while flying at 200 ft above ground at 70 knots. It's like playing basketball with an airplane.
- Simulator testing - As a pilot progresses through his ratings, the role of a flight simulator becomes increasingly more important and therefore a good subject to be examined upon.
- CRM (Crew Resource Management) - All airline pilots and some military pilots exercise CRM. When a complex aircraft is flown (such as a Boeing 747 or Lockheed C-130 Hercules), each pilot is assigned different roles when it comes to operating an aircraft. The piloting crew is expected to use their resources safely and efficiently.
Feel free to contact Remington Viney or Luke Burlingame for questions.
Fun facts about the flying team:
- We qualified for this year's national competition (2015)! We are the first team to represent the State of Wisconsin in the NIFA national competition's 66-year history!
- Our favorite snack is smorange (literally, it is a team consensus)!
- We listen to Air Traffic Control (ATC) radio calls, soul, and jazz music during road trips! We love talking, too (sometimes a little too much).