This week a group of Year 10 & Year 11 students visited the University of Hertfordshire to tour the Aerospace Engineering facilities and joined Lionel C. Wallace DL – the High Sheriff of Hertfordshire in attending a motivational talk by Travis Ludlow – currently the World Record Holder of the Youngest Person to Fly Solo Around the World. Travis spoke about the difficulties he had encountered and how having a goal had a kept him motivated.

To get an idea of the experience of studying aerospace engineering, students toured the aeronautical facilities with student ambassadors:

• seeing the department’s various wind tunnels for testing model components, devices or prototypes
• getting the opportunity to test their skills on the various flight simulators
• hearing about the engineering flight simulator where aircraft parameters could be programme and student aircraft designs could be tested / test flown

Students were then shown the engineering simulator where different aircraft profiles could be programmed. They also heard from a 3rd year student about his final project which was to work as part of a team designing an amphibious firefighting seaplane which would be loaded into the engineering flight simulator for testing and modification before assessment.