High School Students Take Home Big Prize At OSH

The EAA Founder's Innovation Prize is a serious competition. This year's goal was to find the projects that could best address the problem of fatal loss of control accidents in amateur-built aircraft---loss of control being the number one cause of fatal accidents in that category. Not something necessarily geared towards young aviators. But high school students Thomas Baron, Justin Zhou, and Max Lord took a chance and entered their solution---and it paid off to the tune of $25,000.

Courtesy of EAA

Their entry, called the "Remora System," began as a school project, but it didn't stay that way. Remora shows airspeed and angle of attack on a head-mounted display, which gets sensor inputs from a pod mounted under the wing. The Remora System allows pilots to monitor AoA and airspeed continuously without having to glance down at the panel.

There were more than 70 submissions to the competition this year. The judges reviewed all of them and selected five finalists before AirVenture. They were looking for projects that were well-developed and easy to implement.

The finalists were interviewed and questioned about their projects at the show on Tuesday, and the winner was selected there. The members of the judging panel were former NASA shuttle commander and chairman of EAA's safety committee Charlie Precourt, aerobatic champion Michael Goulian, former NTSB senior air safety investigator Gregory Feith, civilian test pilot Dave Morss, and Van's Aircraft founder and chief designer Dick VanGrunsven.

Learn more at EAA.