Ben Garbacz/Daily Mining Gazette Hunter Wilson of Traverse City climbs aboard a plane at Houghton County Memorial Airport as part of Michigan Tech's Summer Youth Program aviation courses on Wednesday. Wilson  had the opportunity to take control of the plane while in the air under supervision of a pilot.

CALUMET — Students participating in Michigan Tech’s Summer Youth Program’s (SYP) aviation courses had the chance to fly under pilot supervision at Houghton County Memorial Airport on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. The flights were supposed to occur later in the week, but the potential for uncooperative weather on Thursday and Friday altered the original schedule. “Visibility would have been poor to have these types of flights,” Public Affairs Officer for the Civil Air Patrol Kevin Cadeau said.

While the students did not participate in the normal amount of classes before flight, they still had the opportunity to fly airplanes above McClain State Park and back. “It’s best to have as much class time as possible before we get them up in the planes, but we couldn’t pass up on the weather today,” Cadeau said.

About 20 students participated in aviation courses which instructed them how to use controls and identify instruments in an airplane and how to operate a joystick with flight simulators. When learning maneuvers the students had to understand what different speeds were needed for each maneuver. Additionally, students were taught how to navigate the airplane while in flight. Cadeau said the simulators the students used would fly from Houghton to Sawyer to Ontonagon and then back to teach them navigation. The original time slots reserved for the flight will now be filled with other aviation classes.

“They get a good taste of all the things that they’re gonna have to do if they want to pursue this as a career, or even to get their private pilot’s license,” Cadeau said. “We talk about, what are the requirements, the different tests you have to take, written and oral and then a flight test, things like that.”

Cadeau said there were also classes which went over the diversity of careers within aviation, many of which were not pilot positions.

“You could be a dispatcher, or, maybe you’re into weather for aviation and maybe being an air traffic controller mechanic,” he explained.

While the program has often pulled in students from all over the country, there were a few students this year from the U.P. including locations Hancock, Lake Linden and Calumet. Among the local students was soon to be Hancock High School sophomore Alexander Freeman. Freeman said he always wanted to become a pilot since he was a child, and SYP was a way to see if he would still be interested.

“Flying today has provoked my interest, and I do plan on pursuing this as a career,” Freeman said.

Freeman said he would like to conduct tourist flights in the future. However with this first step in pursuing aviation, he said learned a lot during the classes and flight, and was able to apply specific turning methods he learned in the classes. “I also was able to implement my knowledge of runway lights to identify if we were too high in the air or too low to land safely on the runway,” Freeman said.

Freeman said while making turns he did not increase his elevation which caused the plane to drop a bit. However his pilot instructed him to keep the nose up and was able to correct his errors. Hw also found it interesting to look down on his hometown, of which he already thought was rather small. “Seeing it from above just made it feel way, way smaller, and it felt more of a place in the woods rather than an actual city,” he said.

Another local student was Gus Walker, a homeschooled Junior from Lake Linden. Walker has an interest in pursuing flying as a hobby and is looking forward to flying his family to other places. “I used to be afraid of planes, but not now,” Walker said. While flying, Walker said he was able to keep the aircraft level and recalled what the gauges signified from the classes. He was also excited to be able to snap pictures of his house from the skies.

A sophomore student from Traverse City, Hunter Wilson, came to the Summer Youth Program with ambitions to become a commercial pilot and is considering attending Michigan Tech. He said he enjoyed being able to fly the majority of the flight back towards the airport and was surprised how smooth the flight turned out to be.

Wilson said the classes were a big help since the controls and buttons were for the most part in the same locations, which helped him understand what was going on. Wilson was also captivated by the Keweenaw from the skies. “It’s a really beautiful area,” Wilson said. “Lake Superior is there and the water’s clear. There’s so much, just beautiful stuff.”