UW students take off with Badger Aviators

University of Wisconsin–Madison students now have the chance to spread their wings and take off, thanks to a student organization dedicated to spreading awareness of aviation.

Badger Aviators focuses on getting students involved in aviation. Its members are aviation enthusiasts, who are passionate about sharing their love of flying with others.

“The joy of taking a friend flying for the first time is an incredible feeling,” says Josh Gilberts, a fifth-year senior majoring in industrial engineering and the club’s president.

The organization also focuses on education by helping others become pilots and helping student pilots improve their skills through free training. Many of those in the organization had no prior flight experience before becoming part of it.

Badger Aviators plan to hold a sky dive event on Saturday, May 3, and those interested in joining them should contact them by Wednesday, April 16.

Chongjian Wen, a UW–Madison sophomore, joined the club his freshman year with no previous piloting experience. A year and a half later, he has almost received his pilot’s license, even before he received his driver’s license.

“Sometimes, I think you have to go up in the air to know why we do this,” Wen says. “I call it the intoxication of being above in the air. It is very addicting.”

Part of introducing new members and friends to aviation involves the organization’s fly-outs. Renting planes at either the Middleton airport or the Dane County airport, Badger Aviators aims to have at least three fly-outs during the semester.

These fly-outs involve a one-hour flight to a nearby Wisconsin airport followed by lunch and a flight back. For instance, members of the organization flew to an airport in Wisconsin Dells and took a shuttle to a nearby buffet.

Besides arranging opportunities to fly, the organization also hosts weekly flight team trainings and ground school trainings, which focus on improving the skills of pilots. The flight team started last year, competing in a regional competition for the first time last fall.

While they did not advance to nationals, Gilberts says they did well considering their competitors came from schools with aviation programs that owned their planes rather than renting them.

The team was founded after Paul Valenstein, a pilot who competed on the University of North Dakota’s team for four years, emailed Badger Aviators to get the club involved. Valenstein became an adviser to the newly formed group.

“The stuff that the flying team does is above the head of the general pilot,” says Valenstein, who is now the team’s head coach. “The flying team is a great way to kind of expand the knowledge base. It’s a good way to become a better pilot. “

Both the flight team and ground school meetings make use of a flight simulator set up in the Mechanical Engineering Building that reproduces realistic images on four monitors along with the controls of an actual plane. Members usually experiment on the machines after ground school trainings and flight team practices, which are held in a nearby room.

“The ground school is aimed at helping people gain the knowledge to pass the written exam of their pilot license, like teaching to the book, learning basic aerodynamics,” says Kelly Abplanalp, the organization’s vice president, who oversees the ground school training session.

Abplanalp, a junior majoring in Chinese, cartography and geographic information systems, began flying planes in high school when she received her pilot’s license. She is now training for a commercial license so she can become a certified flight instructor. Badger Aviators was one of the reasons she chose to go to Madison.

Apart from offering training, the organization also offers tours of nearby airports and control towers. They have also toured UW Hospitals to talk with the pilots who fly emergency helicopters.

Club members have met with members of Wisconsin Aviation, the state’s largest aviation service provider, and have attended Experimental Aircraft Association meetings to talk with people who have built and restored planes and worked in aviation.

Badger Aviators welcomes those interested in aviation to their fly-outs and all other events. Ground school meetings and flight team trainings are held in Mechanical Engineering Building room 3121 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m.