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Carey's Wright Stuff

By Allen VanNoppen | The News Herald

Published: April 20, 2008

Adam Carey gave his airplane a final preflight exam, ensuring it was configured for proper turn, distance, altitude and duration.

He checked the rudder, the fuselage, the propulsion system and the prop. And with a visual check to make sure the flight path was clear of obstacles, prepared for launch.

A video posted on YouTube tells the rest of the story.

A ninth grader at Robert L. Patton High School, and son of Morganton's Joe and Ingrid Carey, 14-year-old Adam is an aviation buff. When he's not playing tennis or practicing guitar, he is building lightweight, tournament-caliber competition airplanes constructed of Mylar and Balsa Wood and powered by a rubber bands.

Earlier this month he won Second Place in statewide contest titled "Wright Stuff" and held in a N.C. State University gymnasium.

Adam represented Patton High School in the event. Contestants from 49 other North Carolina high schools participated. Dubbed C-27, his two foot-long plane, with a wingspan of about 19 inches, flew high among the rafters of the gym for nearly three minutes. Fully loaded, it weighs seven grams.

At my invitation, Adam came by my office to talk about the contest. Handsome, dark haired and flashing a quick smile, he hauled a large box to the table. He opened it and gingerly extracted the C-27. I asked if I could hold it.

He looked at me for a couple of seconds. I could tell he was taking a measurement: Could I be trusted not to do some idiotic thing like drop it. Apparently so. He gently handed it over the same way the surgeon hands over the healthy human heart during a transplant. Carefully.

I pinched the fuselage about midpoint. Seven grams spread across about three square feet feels like, well, nothing.

Do you know how much seven grams is? It's the weight of one cubic foot of summertime air. A cubic foot of air! It's the weight of a teaspoon of wheat flour. It's nothing. It's how much fat is in a medium-size Frosty from Wendy's. Hardly any.

While I marveled at the precise weight and balance and the clean application of clear Mylar on meticulously carved Balsa Wood, Adam told me about the plane and the contest.

It is a Freedom Flight model plane, he said, designed to meet C Division Science Olympiad specifications.

Hence the C-27 painted on the fuselage, I asked. "Yes," he said. "And 27 was the number of our school at the contest."

"I built it at the end of last year," Adam said, watching like a hawk my every move as I rotated C-27 and eyeballed its profile. "It took a good four days, making sure everything was done correctly and done really well."

During construction a big swatch of clear Mylar slipped from his grip and rose in the room's convention currents. "It just floated up and did this" he said, making swirling gestures with his hand.

Once built C-27 required flight tests. Adam, his dad, Joe, and teammate Amanda Beam, spent many a weekend and evening in empty school gymnasiums flying and adjusting and adjusting and flying. Tweak the prop, reposition the rudder.

"We flew it a lot," Adam said. "Sometimes three or four hours each day. We made very small adjustment to get it to steer or climb, whatever it needed to do. The stabilizer is tilted to make it turn and the prop is angled to enhance the climb."

In February the Wright Stuff regionals were held at CVCC. Winners advanced to the state contest in Raleigh. "Everyone had to have a plane built to specifications, including minimum weight," he said. About 16 schools entered. Adam and Amanda placed second.

"It flew for one minute and 40 seconds," he said. "We got second because it (C-27) hit a raised basketball goal and got stuck."

On April 5, in Raleigh, Joe and Amanda prepared to launch C-27 in the state finals. You can see them in a YouTube video titled, "Patton High Wright Stuff at State Competition." To the music of Jack Johnson, Adam, wearing oversized chemistry lab protective eye goggles ("They made us wear them," he said.) holds the plane chest high, level, takes two steps forward and releases C-27 with the gentlest of nudges.

It soars up, steadily turning counterclockwise. It rises past the Wolfpack-red second-tier seats and flies among roof rafters and tournament banners. The camera pans straight up, tracking C-27 as it orbits the gym floor.

C-27's flight lasted two minutes and 54 seconds. "It was the longest flight ever," Adam told me. Good enough for second place.

On the video you can see C-27 conclude its flight by gliding to an easy touch down midcourt. Joe and Amanda stroll out from the sidelines and Joe ever-so-gently picks it up. And just before the video ends you hear his mom asking, "How do you turn this thing off?" I guess she was video taping.