Two-day Lossiemouth Visit: From the RAF to the next generation of engineers

Last week, we had the opportunity to go on a two-day trip to Lossiemouth and present our work to two very different audiences; the Rolls-Royce team at RAF Lossiemouth and pupils at Hythehill Primary school!

On Monday, we had the pleasure of introducing the X-Plorer 1 and our current projects at the team of the Rolls-Royce Service Delivery Centre within RAF Lossiemouth. The unit responsible for the first line of maintenance for the Typhoon engines, the EJ200, welcomed us and following a presentation on our work, showed us around the facility, giving us the opportunity to inspect an engine up close and find out more about some of the operational and maintenance aspects of the EJ200. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the facility and we are looking forward to returning and running the X-Plorer 1 next time!

Paul Gardner (Rolls-Royce RAF Propulsion Centre) with JetX vice-president, Ross Williams.

On Tuesday, we had a great time at Hythehill Primary School where we gave a talk to 4 student groups, in order to introduce students to the various engineering careers, how to get into them and what subjects are most useful. We want to not only share our experience, given that some of us didn't leave school too long ago, address some misconceptions around the engineering profession, as well as inspire the newer generation!

Each talk was followed by a 20-minute activity during which the students were asked to form teams and tackle an engineering challenge. Making use of only 3D printed connectors and paper straws the groups had to build the tallest structure that can support a mass of up to 500g. Given finite resources, a limited amount of time and the ability to "buy" additional materials for a point loss, all groups were creative with many achieving the goal of this challenge! We were impressed by many of the structures and found it to be a very suspenseful activity when it came to applying the weight.

It was great fun interacting with the students and we hope that they learned something knew, if they are not considering becoming an engineer already! If you are a teacher and would be interested to have us during a STEM event for your school, we would be delighted to hear from you; you can get in touch using the contact form or by simply emailing us at any time.

---

This visit was proudly sponsored by the