LONDONDERRY, N.H. — The Aviation Museum of New Hampshire is taking its education program to new heights with the launch of a new summer camp.
Called “Flights of Discovery,” the summer camp program will run for four weeks, from July 10, 2023, through Aug. 3, 2023.
“Our new summer camp is designed to stimulate and encourage the natural curiosity that young people have about flight,” said Debbora Losch, education director for the non-profit Aviation Museum of N.H.
The camp is open to students ages 10 to 17 interested in exploring all aspects of aviation and aerospace, according to museum officials.
Several aviation-related field trips are included, with the camp’s final day celebration including pizza delivered by a helicopter.
The summer camp is divided into two sections: One for middle schoolers ages 10-13 and another for high school students ages 14-17. The camp is limited to 20 students in each section.
Middle school students will engage in indoor and outdoor hands-on activities exploring topics ranging from the physics of flight to the arrangement of the solar system. High schoolers will participate in many hands-on activities, but will also explore career possibilities in aviation ranging from piloting and air traffic control to aircraft maintenance and aerospace engineering.
All participants will log time on the museum’s Elite Flight Simulator, and will travel together on field trips that include a behind-the-scenes tour of Manchester-Boston Regional Airport and the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center and Planetarium.
Students will also visit maintenance hangars and other airport facilities, and will get an up-close look at the RV-12iS two-seat aircraft recently completed by students at the Manchester School of Technology. Weather permitting, campers will see the student-built plane take to the skies, museum officials said.
Other activities include designing wings with specialized software, then outputting them on a 3-D printer and using the museum’s vintage electro-mechanical wind tunnel to test the results for efficiency.
The cost of the camp is $450 a week or $1,800 total for the full program. Financial aid and tuition scholarships are available to all students who qualify. Children from low-income families are encouraged to apply, museum officials said.
“We’ve designed our first-ever Aviation Summer Camp to be the best it can possibly be, so it’s not inexpensive. But no one should be turned away by an inability to pay,” Losch said. “I encourage families to ask about financial assistance so that all students can have what may be a life-changing experience.”
For more information and to apply, go to AviationMuseumOfNH.org and click on the links about the aviation summer camp.