STEM Series and Teaching Kids

[jross]

A friend who saved my * last year when my aorta tried to kill me has a son with autism. For that reason, he's home schooled. He's incredibly bright and a very fine young man.

Flite Test has a STEM series for teaching kids how to build and fly RC planes. I'd love to take my friend's son out and get him hooked. He'd eat this * up and be outflying, outdesigning and outbuilding me in weeks. Maybe days. I can give him my copy of RealFlight 8 if he shows interest.

So I need to figure out how to do this on my limited budget. I use a Taranis X9D plus. I need a radio that will buddy box with it. My model has no wireless buddy boxing built in, so I'd need to figure that out. If he catches the bug and shows interest, our education system will provide funding for anything STEM related. One of the bonuses of living in Canada and paying a lot of tax. Challenged youth are less likely to be left behind.

When my aorta tried to kill me, I had 60 hogs. This young man's father fed and cared for them, sold them when it became obvious I couldn't care for them any time soon, and wouldn't take cent for it. He came over and removed broken bolts and studs from the head of my skid steer so I can fix it and plow my driveway, which is long. A heart the size of a mountain. He took time away from his family of 4 to help me and continues to do so. Helping his son seems like the least I can do.

Not working for 6 months kicked the * out of my finances for now and though I can find some money to spend on this, I can't afford to waste it on anything but the most frugal solution.

So I'm looking for some guidance.

 

[jross]

Never mind. Think I have it figured. Maybe. No thanks to you! LOL.

 

[PsyBorg]

Sounds like you have had a tough path to walk this past year mate. Its great when people step up and help. I know, I have had plenty of help since I got hurt at work.

Anyways, first I ask you to change some of your wording in your furst post. Lots of younger kids read sone of our posts and its forum rules.

Now for buddy boxing. 99% of radios built havevan audio jack used to connect radios for buddy boxing. The Taranis is one of them. Better yet with open tx you can buddy box with nearly all radios as you can remap channels if needed to match non Taranis radios. The cable is a standard 2mm mono to mono cable easily found in whatever length you need to comfortably stand next to or in your case add a little breathing room for the boy you wish to help.

 

[jross]

Sounds like you have had a tough path to walk this past year mate. Its great when people step up and help. I know, I have had plenty of help since I got hurt at work.

Anyways, first I ask you to change some of your wording in your furst post. Lots of younger kids read some of our posts and its forum rules.

Now for buddy boxing. 99% of radios built havevan audio jack used to connect radios for buddy boxing. The Taranis is one of them. Better yet with open tx you can buddy box with nearly all radios as you can remap channels if needed to match non Taranis radios. The cable is a standard 2mm mono to mono cable easily found in whatever length you need to comfortably stand next to or in your case add a little breathing room for the boy you wish to help.

Thank you for your warm sentiments. I wasn't pissing and moaning about my circumstance. Everyone's life sucks, from time to time. More looking for help, which you have graciously provided.

I'm unaware I broke any forum rules but did slightly edit my original post. Hard to know what offends people these days. If I've broken any rules, please educate me.

I'm familiar with the audio cable connection. Lost one plane and damn near several others using one which is why I should have mentioned I'd prefer a wireless solution. My mistake. The cable is less than reliable. Jiggle it a bit or turn suddenly and you're not connected. Looks like everything is connected fine but no signal. Jiggle the cable again and it works. Funky. Tried several cables but never got the kind of connection that gave me a big warm fuzzy. I was a student when this happened flying my planes.

Looks like you can use an Frsky X-Lite with the 9XD+ with no modifications if you use one of two RX Frsky provides. Still doing research on that but appreciate your input.

 

[Casey]

I am running a modified version of the FT STEM program here at my bilingual high school in Taiwan. I started them off building an FT Sparrow chuck glider, and giving them notes on the different parts and functions of the plane as we went. Once they had a good understanding of the construction techniques and basic flight mechanics, I had them team up and modify the plans via the Sparrow's Egg Challenge in the FT STEM materials. If you don't have access to those yet, it's basically a Sparrow glider modified to carry a raw egg 10 meters and land without cracking the egg. That's their final project for this semester. It introduced the Engineering Design Model to them, as well as some basic materials science.

For the next semester I'm getting into simulators with them because this school has no space for actual flying outside the gymnasium, but for you, you could then move into a Tiny Trainer build, introduce the control surfaces and their functions, etc per your own imagination. The FT STEM section has a lot of good stuff if you enroll. There are smaller simpler models that you can use to demonstrate the principles of CG, control surfaces, etc with a very quick build. Check it out.

 

[jross]

Thanks, Casey. I spent some time looking at the program after your comment. An interesting program for sure. Not sure how I'd work it in this situation as I'm pretty much a greenhorn but I'll dig in and see.