Texas State Technical College will celebrate its first place win at the National Intercollegiate Flight Association’s 2016 SAFECON with an awards ceremony at noon Friday in the Aerospace Center terminal.
TSTC’s flight team, comprised of 10 students, placed first for of two-year colleges at the competition held May 9 through 14 in Columbus, Ohio. SAFECON, which began in 1949, awards teams and individuals in the categories of outstanding team member, navigation, pre-flight inspections, safety, men and women’s achievement, and more. Teams must complete each challenge while meeting all flight safety standards.
Daniel Shanks, a third semester Aircraft Pilot Training student, competed for the first time this year. He first competed in the regional competition held in Mississippi, and then nationals.
“At regionals there were five schools. At nationals there were at least five times the competition there,” Shanks said. “The people that were there were the best of the best. It was exhilarating to be able to compete on such a small scale initially, and then see how big of a deal nationals are.”
The country is divided into 10 regions, and the top three from each region go on to the national competition.
Shanks competed in several events including aircraft recognition, power-on and power-off landings, instrument flight rules, message drop and aircraft pre-flight. In the aircraft pre-flight event, they add 60 “bugs” to an airplane, and the students have to find and fix them in the dark.
“There’s an aircraft in a hanger. It’s completely black, and you go in with a flashlight and deem it worthy or unworthy of flight,” Shanks said.
TSTC Flight Instructor Jack Gainer, who was the group’s adviser, said the competition is about more than flight.
“One of the ground events that we did was computer accuracy,” Gainer said. “They have to calculate different flight and navigation skills. Two of our competitors in those events were Air Traffic Controllers.”
Shanks said the time the team put into training paid off.
“We put in a lot of time and effort,” Shanks said. “It was nice to have somebody like Jack, who has a lot of prior military experience, coach us. He was able to bring some of that to the team. He really helped mold us into the pilots we’ve become. He brought a new mindset. Once everybody started putting in the extra effort, it was nice to get the top two-year school in the nation.”
But the team walked away with something even more important than a trophy.
“I think we definitely grew as a team. Prior to the event, we weren’t as close as we were when we came out of it,” Shanks said. “What’s so cool about the NIFA experience is that it’s not a single effort event. You have to do as well as the entire team. It takes the entire team working well together to get that top award. The camaraderie we came out of Ohio with is amazing. I think we’ll all be friends forever, and that’s something I like a lot.”
Gainer said he was extremely proud of his students on the win.
“As an educator, we always want to see our students do well,” Gainer said. “Usually that’s only measured for us when they get a job; pass a checkride; small measurements like that. To be able to be labelled as national champions, that gave me an enormous amount of pride for both my students and the program here.”
The awards ceremony congratulating the team will be at noon Friday in the Aerospace Center terminal. For more information on TSTC’s Aerospace programs, visit www.tstc.edu.