SAFECON Region VIII

This week college students from six different schools assembled for one major competition to see which school demonstrates the greatest skill in aviation. Starting October 31, The National Intercollegiate Flying Association held the Region VIII SAFECON at Murfreesboro Municipal Airport in Tennessee. Middle Tennessee State hosted regional’s this year and the competing schools that traveled to the event included Purdue University, Indiana State, Southern Illinois, University of Illinois, and Lewis University. Region VIII has a reputation of being one of the most difficult regions in the United States and only three teams out of the six make it to the SAFECON National Competition in the spring.

The competing teams usually arrive about two days before the competition to get used to their surroundings and get a solid day of practice in before the events start Wednesday evening. The official beginning of the event started at 6:00 Wednesday night with an overall briefing of the competition to all the teams in one assembly. No time was spared after the briefing and the first event, aircraft recognition, began. Only a few selected students from each team were chosen to put their skills to the test and win points for their team. Study times for every event were strenuous and an exuberant amount of effort was focused on each team member’s event.

The following day, students assembled at the airport early in the morning to begin the navigation event. Weather involving low lying clouds caused a two hour delay of the event until the pilot and navigator were allowed to leave and finish their route. Following the heats of navigation immediately came the message drop event. Barrels were positioned on the left side of the runway allowing airplanes to make their one low pass and get their drop as close as they could to the target. Back at the campus, students tested their abilities in the flight simulators and flew an entire route by memory alone of altitude, time, airspeed, and heading. When nightfall hit more ground events started including SCAN and computer accuracy.

Friday was the last chance for students to score a significant amount of points for their team with only two events remaining. The most challenging and pressuring event came first thing in the morning with power-off landings coming first, followed by power-on landings. There were a total of six heats in each type and judges lining the entire runway looking for any reason to deduct points from the pilots. Afterwards the judges met to tally their score and decide how many points to give each pilot. The preflight competition occurred after the landings on an airplane bugged with a wide variety of errors. The winner of the competition will be announced on Saturday and individual trophies will be awarded to the contestants placing in each event. Overall it was a very enjoyable and learning experience being at Regional’s this week and may the best team win!