Hutchinson team earns prize for wing design

Hutchinson High School’s Real World Design Challenge team did not make it to the final round in the national competition Saturday (March 24). But team mentor Daryl Lundin is proud of his students nonetheless.

The Hutchinson team — seniors Jacob Ballard, Erik Bute, Katherine Weikle and junior Jesse Brooks — went head-to-head against nine other teams from Connecticut, Hawaii, Kansas, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

Their challenge was to design a wing for a 17,000-pound aircraft, optimized for minimum drag when cruising at Mach .95 at an altitude of 37,000 feet. The wing designs were judged by U.S. Department of Energy staffers, Cessna Aircraft Co. employees and university professors.

The top three finalists were teams from Hawaii, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. The Ilona School team from Honolulu took top honors.

Hutchinson earned a $500 prize for its high school’s technology education department.

“I feel very good about what they did,” he said. “They handled the project professionally and they learned a lot in the process. That’s the most important thing. They made it to Washington (D.C.) and they competed against the top teams in the nation.”

(Jorge Sosa is a staff writer for the Hutchinson Leader. He can be reached at sosa@hutchinsonleader.com)