Project Schoolflight

rdf:langString Project Schoolflight

rdf:langString Project Schoolflight was a youth outreach program of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) which was jointly co-founded in 1955 by EAA founder Paul Poberezny and Robert D. Blacker, the director of the Aviation Industrial Arts program at St. Rita of Cascia High School in Chicago, Illinois. Poberezny had written series of three articles entitled "Build this plane (Baby Ace) for $800, Including Engine" which ran in consecutive 1955 monthly issues of Mechanix Illustrated magazines and Blacker decided to use the plans for the first Schoolflight homebuilt aircraft project. Blacker contacted Poberezny and he supplied a copy of the Baby Ace plans for the program at no charge. Poberezny thought that Blacker's program could provide him with a start to fulfilling one of his lifetime dreams - to have an "airplane building factory" for homebuilt aircraft. It was from these discussions that both men agreed to co-found Project Schoolflight together. The Project Schoolflight program was initially overseen by both men but it grew so quickly that it became administered by the EAA's Air Museum Foundation instead. The project dissolved around 1978, and would eventually help inspire the founding of the very successful EAA Young Eagles program, established in 1992.