Media Release
Pics: Daya Kukkaje
Mangaluru, Sep 20: Aerophilia 2019, a two-day national level aeromodelling competition took off on Friday at Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management, here.
The event has its primary goal to implant ideas of aeromodelling and aerospace in young minds and to encourage young talents to explore more. Aerophilia consists of 20 different events with exciting cash prizes. About 1,500 students from various schools and colleges across India including IITs and NITs participated in the event. The main attraction of the event this year is the hackathon conducted by ISRO exclusively at Aerophilia on the Navic chip.
The chief guest, Cdr T R A Narayanan of Indian Navy (Retd), who is also a prime member of Aeromodelling Association of India, appreciated the enthusiasm in the students in organizing and participating in the event. He was quite impressed by the paper plane competition that will be held and said, "Paper planes are not just for kids. The aerodynamics that goes into the simple planes also carries a high level of aerodynamics."
Maneesh Saxena and Akhileshwar Reddy, deputy directors of industry interface under the Satnav programme by ISRO were also present during the occasion.
Ashwin L Shetty who was the composite manager at Airbus Helicopters in China spoke on the occasion and said, "Events like these ignite young minds in thinking why we need to study Math and Physics and their applications in the field of aeronautics and aerospace."
Manjunath Bhandary, chairman of Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management said, “The main intention of this event is to ignite the minds of young engineers and to create awareness on the advancing technologies in the field of aerospace." He also said that this event is organized by team Challengers which is a student club and is entirely planned and organized by them.
The event was called open by the guests by giving a throttle and an RC plane, flying high in the air with the Aerophilia banner. Soon after this, there were spectacular air shows by Abhay Pawar and Ragavendra B S, who are both professional RC flyers. Principal, Dr R Srinivasa Rao Kunte and vice-principal, Prof S S Balakrishna, management and faculty were also present at the air show event.
The schedule for day 1 of Aerophilia has technical events like aeromodelling, drone race, water rocket and tug of bots as well as some fun events like treasure hunt, Rubik’s cube and CS GO and also, the hackathon conducted by ISRO scientists. The day will conclude in the evening by a cultural programme which includes a concert by Team Martians and a standup comedy by Mandar Bhide from Bingo Comedy Adda.