Mangalore: Aerophilia 2019 a two day national level aeromodelling competition took off at Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management, Mangalore. The event has its primary goal to implant ideas of aeromodelling and aerospace in young minds and to encourage young talents to explore more. Aerophilia consists of 20 different events with exciting cash prizes. About 1500 students participated from various schools and colleges across India including IITs and NITs.
The main attraction of the event this year is the hackathon conducted by ISRO exclusively at Aerophilia on the Navic chip.
The chief guest of the event Cdr T R A Narayanan of Indian Navy (Retd), who is also a prime member of aeromodelling association of India, appreciated the enthusiasm in the students in organizing and participating in the event. He was quite impressed by the paper plane competition that was held and said, "Paper planes are not just for kids. The aerodynamics that goes into the simple planes is also high level of aerodynamics”.
Maneesh Saxena and Akhileshwar Reddy, Deputy Directors of industry interface under Satnav program by ISRO were also present during the occasion.
Ashwin L Shetty who was the composite manager at Airbus Helicopters in China also spoke on the occasion and said, "Events like these ignites the young minds in thinking why we need to study Math and Physics and their applications in the field of aeronautics and aerospace”.
Manjunath Bhandary, Chairman of Sahyadri College of engineering and management said “The main intension of this event is to ignite the minds of young engineers and to create awareness on the advancing technologies in the field of aerospace”. He also said that this event is organized by team Challengers which is a student club and is entirely planned and organized entirely by students themselves.
The event was called open by the guests by giving a throttle and a RC plane flying high in the air with the Aerophilia banner. Soon after this there were spectacular Air shows by Abhay pawar and Ragavendra B S, who are both professional RC flyers. Principal, Dr. R Srinivasa Rao Kunte and Vice-Principal, Prof. S.S. Balakrishna, management and the faculty were also present in the air show event.
