Де і як київські школярі опановують авіацію?

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A little home of sky

How are Kyiv schoolchildren taught to be aviators?

Kyiv is a city, where well-known aircraft constructor Igor Sikorsky was born, where pilot Pyotr Nesterov was the first in the world to perform his famous ‘Nesterov's loop’, where the biggest cargo aircraft An-225 ‘Mriya’ was constructed at the Oleg Antonov aircraft plant. So, the capital of Ukraine could be fairly named a birthplace of the aviation innovations. Even more, many young aviators still get vocational training here.

Kyiv schoolchildren study basics of aviation, learn operating an aircraft and principles of radio connection, construct models of airplanes and also prepare for their first jumping with a parachute in the Aviation and space centre at Kyiv Palace of children and youth.

How does the studying go on in the centre?

Children practice their knowledge in physics or geography at the classes of aeronavigation and add it with the principles of aerodynamics, meteorology, navigation and radio connection, they also learn the structure of the aircraft. But two thirds of the studying consist of trainings on the simulators (МІG-21 and L-39).

‘Our trainer sees the same things on the monitor, that I see in the cabin of the aircraft simulator, all of the appliances. He points out on my mistakes using the radio connection and gives me advices’, the student of the centre Svitlana Padun describes the process of studying. Every summer teens go to the aerodrome that is in Nalyvaikivka of Kyiv oblast to fly a real airplane accompanied by the instructor.

In addition, thanks to The International Air Cadet Exchange program once a year young aviators visit Great Britain to gain experience from the best ones in aviation, to get acquainted with British Royal Air Force. In addition, Prince Michael of Kent, Honorary Air Marshal, has visited the Aviation and space centre in Kyiv and marked its work well.

The students also study Morse code, principles of reception and transmission of radio signals at the oldest Ukrainian collective child radio station.

Every weekend teens spend from four to six hours at the aeromodeling workshop constructing their airplane and rocket models. ‘Staying concentrated is the hardest. You need at least six months to make a model', Dmytro Kurylenko, the student, says. As Igor Milenin, the instructor, reports, if somebody wants to launch the airplane model, he needs to be a joiner, a turner and a colorist at the same time.

‘The first one was the brightest, but the second one was the most fearful for me’, Eugene Popov, the graduate, remembers his parachutes. During a year the teens are prepared for this by the instructor following the special program.

Every trainer who works here is a fanatic of his job. But the staff worries about the small possibilities to modernize the equipment of the centre. Despite of this fact children and their trainers want to come back here every day like the pilots want to return to the sky after the landing.

Anastasiia Karpenko
Опубліковано в виданні ІТА ЮН-ПРЕС КПДЮ 
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