TEHACHAPI, Calif. — Two afternoons a week, at an hour most classrooms close, 19 high school students gather in a municipal airport hangar for two hours of hands-on experience in building an airplane.

Demonstrating and sharing their knowledge and experience and skills are retired volunteers who designed, built, maintained, or piloted some of the fastest, highest-flying, and most exotic aircraft in the world.

In the American aeronautical and technological tradition of grassroots, homegrown tinkering in a bicycle shop, down in the basement, and out in the garage, Tehachapi’s Build-a-Plane Project evolved from being in the right place at the right time, with the right people.

Mostly known for apple orchards, mountain recreation, shopping, arts, crafts, and the “Tehachapi Loop” railroad tunnels maze, the city’s less visible economic asset is proximity to Edwards Air Force Base, NASA’s Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center, the Mojave Air and Space Port and America’s company town — Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale.

With a moderate four-season climate and in reasonable commuting range of desert aerospace centers, Tehachapi has for decades attracted an active, involved, and influential core of aerospace retirees, including the informally constituted Build-a-Plane mentors, the Tehachapi Society of Pilots.

The TSP “greybeards” as they’re sometimes called, might be a prototype model on the cutting edge of 21st-century high school level career education. The Build-a-Plane model offers informal, on-the-job training practiced on aerospace factory floors, aligned with the academic formal oversight and participation of Kern County’s Valley Oaks Charter High School. The hybrid occupational school model isn’t new but is durable.

The Tehachapi Build-a-Plane Project will celebrate its fourth anniversary in January 2022, and this fall made the test flight of its first student-built airplane.

Tom Karnes, principal at Tehachapi’s Valley Oaks Charter High School, accepted the role of project coordinator, also handling additional weekly classroom work involving students from several high schools, including one from Lancaster. Members of that first cohort have now graduated, with some in college, career trade school, or the military. Significantly, some early graduates were hired for well-paying technical jobs right out of high school with the skills required.

As a Charter School, Valley Oaks offers the Build-a-Plane opportunity to students from any district, including those being home-schooled under a district program, this year including a brother and sister, Jacob and Tara Groh, junior and freshman, respectively.

Paul Nafziger, Project Build-a-Plane manager and retired test pilot and executive from BAE Systems in Mojave, said that along with an emphasis on individual vocational-technical skills and use of tools and materials involved in nearly every phase of aircraft construction and repair. Working alone and in small group teams, students lead and follow in learning to perform two finds of riveting, measuring, marking and drilling metal, reading engineering drawings, and systems installations, including electronics under the watchful eye of Brian “Sparky” Eney.

Beyond classroom theory of flight, protocol, and procedures, Nafziger said students leave the program with a growing sense of maturity, self-confidence, sense of purpose and a work ethic employers love to see in job applicants.

The sense of professional attitude shows in what a visitor sees on the city-provided hangar’s factory floor. No horseplay. Discussion but no arguments or horseplay. The students work independently and in small group teams, cooperating to solve problems and to help teammates. They show up early and still until quitting time. The tools are real and sharp and demand constant attention. There’s nowhere to hide sloppy work. They do it right or they do it over until it’s right.

The greybeard mentors are generous with praise, gentle in delivering advice or correction, and clear in their directions. Their career credentials command respect and get it.

Also among the greybeards are: Keith Day, retired from NASA after 26 years in the machine shop, first at the Johnson Space Center and most recently at NASA Armstrong; Bill Gannon, former North American / NA Rockwell / Boeing builder of B-1s and Space Shuttles;

Daryl Townsend, a former aircraft crew chief from NASA at Edwards; Gary Childress, retired aircraft mechanic for TWA Boeing 747s; Jay Featherstone, retired FAA-certified repair station manager; Tim McGuire, retired Boeing production manager; John Tumilowicz, retired from Grumman Aerospace, where he worked on the Apollo Program Lunar Excursion Module, and Buzz Wells, retired NASA engineer assigned to the team investigating the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster.

In short, students who finish the program with those mentors — and most do — leave with transportable skills and career path opportunities well beyond the seemingly forced college-for-all philosophy.

Nafziger said students and parents took a lot on faith in the beginning of the program and quickly delivered an unexpected endorsement that saved the program from a Covid-19 disaster. “When things were shutting down with COVID, we thought we might have to close the program. We put out a questionnaire to parents, and their response was a firm NO.”

The original Build-a-Plane plan has changed in several ways since the beginning, mostly because of support exceeding expectations. In the beginning, the all-metal, two-place, high-wing CH750 STOL kit plane bought with a donation was intended to be sold at auction, with proceeds to buy the next airplane kit.

Plans changed. Now the plan is to keep the CH750 for orientation rides for students. Meanwhile, students are already working to build a more advanced all-metal four-place, low-wing Van’s Aircraft RV-10, and maybe rebuild and restore in parallel a donated North American Aviation-built military T-28 trainer with parts stored in a hangar. Next up would be having the students convert a Chevy Corvette Stingray engine to aircraft use and install it in a Van’s RV-9, a two-place, low-wing aircraft. Last, and still subject to change, is the completion of Velocity, a composite four-place rear-engine pusher based on a Florida company’s Long-EZ design.

Narrating the first test flight of the student-built CH750 Cruzer kit-plane manufactured by Zenith Aircraft Company of Mexico, Mo., was Tehachapi Society of Pilots member Wilbur “Buzz” Wells. He told the crowd what to expect as Project Director and test pilot Paul Nafziger put the red silver-gray and black aircraft through a series of maneuvers to evaluate its performance and handling characteristics. TSP member Bob Meyer flew the chase plane, observing the Cruzer’s performance. Nafziger, who conducted high-speed taxi tests earlier, said additional test flights followed as a required step for FAA certification.

That first flight marked a milestone in a campaign that began more than four years earlier when an anonymous donor approached a board member of the Arts, Science & Technology Educational Corporation of Tehachapi with an idea and a five-figure check for starters.

Thane Lundberg championed the donor’s proposal to invest in a project giving young people hands-on learning. The retired TSP greybeards at the airport led the way, bringing together more than 50 high school students with retired mentors to provide personal coaching in basic aircraft assembly.

As was reported in Tehachapi’s The Loop newspaper, mentors representing more than 200 years of cumulative experience were joined by a growing cadre of other volunteer supporters, including Mike Nixon of Vintage Radials, Inc., hangar workstations builder Hal Lyon and many others, including donations from Tehachapi Cheers for Charity and George Sandy, longtime pilot and TSP member who died a year ago.

Volunteers involved in the program included, in addition to those already mentioned, John Tumilowitz, construction leader, Brian Eney, contributor, Hal Lyon, hangar workstations builder, and mentors Jay Featherstone, Gary Childress, Tim McGuire, Ralph Bhirdo, Bill Gannon, and Darrell Townsend.

Work started on the plane in January 2018 and was completed in time for the first flight in October 2021.

Although the individual behind the donation still wants to be anonymous, after the first flight Lundberg said the man has been following the progress of the program and is very proud of the students’ accomplishments. He said the donation was made through a foundation.

Wells said additional local funding also aided the project, including donations from Tehachapi Cheers for Charity and George Sandy, longtime pilot and member of TSP who died last year.

Enjee “Diesel” Bekker and his staff at the Hydro Chrome Company of Tehachapi donated the labor, designed the color scheme, and gave the aircraft its dazzling paint job.

The Zenith CH750 falls under a Lightweight Sport Aviation category of planes approved by the Federal Aviation Administration as a lower-cost way to enter general aviation.

The plane is an excellent trainer because of its low stall speed of 39 miles per hour and its resistance to stalls and spins.

The timing of Tehachapi Build-a-Plane movement intersects with a growing level of public policy concern about looming workforce shortages in all technical occupations, but especially in the aerospace industry, which represents such a large share of California’s economic prosperity.

Sacramento columnist Dan Walters addressed the problem in a September 2021 report on a Public Policy Institute of California study’s finding that those lacking four-year-college educations are most likely to leave the state while those with higher education degrees are more likely to come here from other states.

He wrote that California’s high housing costs drive away from the very people we need to build more housing and everything else made in the state, from utilities to bridges, pipelines, and airplanes.

Walters concluded, “The situation implies that California must do better in generating skilled workers within itself, rather than relying on migration, and there are some hopeful indications of that attitudinal change. A recent announcement by Chaffey College, a community college in Fontana, is one such indication. It has received a $2.9 million state grant to build a new welding training facility that will double the number of trainees. Welders are much in demand and earn premium wages.

Last week, the Legislature passed a bill to promote blue-collar trades among high school students.

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