Garamendi commends Spark winners
Two teams of Will C. Wood High School students were tasked with addressing challenges faced in the Air Force. They came up with practical ideas as part of the Travis Spark Challenge, conducted research, created models, presented at Travis Air Force Base and won first-place trophies for their work.
The honors did not stop there. Both teams were visited by Rep. John Garamendi, D-Solano, who presented them with commendations after they explained their visions Thursday.
The teams participated in the first Travis Spark Challenge in three years, where high schoolers develop solutions to problems Travis and the Air Force at large are facing. Two challenges were saving fuel and keeping foreign object debris (FOD) out of the flight line path, which were won by Will C. Wood's automotive technology and aviation students.
The aviation team also won first place overall, beating out three teams from De Anza High School in Richmond.
The teams presented their projects again Thursday, this time to Garamendi, who also chairs the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness. The fuel savings team — seniors Hayden Hawkins, Korbin Hope, Scott Rawlins and Luciouse Simi — presented their plan for the Air Force to convert to electric generators as an alternative to diesel.
“The amount of diesel that they use is an insane number: 100 million gallons per year,” Scott said. “Our idea is get rid of one of the things that's running all the time. The generators are always running 24-7 during maintenance or startup on the planes.”
The team's vision was to have generators that would provide electrical support to planes during maintenance and startup.
“We decided to go with that because the generators run the most, and Travis Air Force Base has a lot of big planes that need maintenance,” Scott said.”We thought eliminating one of the things
that's running constantly — it's a big diesel generator that doesn't need to be running — will save money on the diesel fuels.”
Scott explained it as “essentially just a big battery” that would also save a lot of money over time.
Garamendi had been at Travis Air Force Base earlier that morning to meet with base officials as he writes a law designating Travis for a pilot project providing electrification on base.
“This is exactly what the colonel and I were talking about this morning and how to do this,” he said.
Garamendi specifically liked the data that was included.
“I need to make that argument to my colleagues in Congress,” he said. “We're writing the National Defense Authorization Act now, and this is exactly what I need.”
Garamendi urged the students to write up their plan and submit it to him.
The congressman also visited the aviation team, consisting of sophomore Cody Evans, senior Rogelio Meza, senior Alison Schonauer and freshman Melissa Schonauer.
The issue presented to them was FODs such as rocks and broken vehicle parts getting on runways and disrupting flights. Cleaning it up is done manually as planes prepare to take off, but the team's idea was an electric device with a pressure plate that automatically turns on a conveyor belt with brushes to clean up debris and dirt before planes land on the runway.
“This is something that will go down the runway and try to sweep up any FOD on the runway so that it can't damage any other planes,” Alison said. “It has a sweeper that will sweep it into a dustbin so that someone will come by and collect the stuff out of it.”
Rogelio said the device would be able to run at any time, even when planes are not operating.
Garamendi praised this idea, too.
“This is autonomous, and that fits with a new industry that is rapidly growing,” he said. “I was in San Francisco a week ago, and there were three different companies that were totally autonomous picking people up on the street and taking them someplace.”
Garamendi also emphasized the importance of protecting places such as the new F-35 Lightning II which have engines vulnerable to debris.
“Dust, small gravel, they're gonna destroy the engine,” he said. “It has to operate and be pristine.”
Garamendi suggested the students sell their idea to the Air Force.
“You guys are leading the way,” he said.
Garamendi presented each student with individual commendations.
“You've got a great future,” he said. “You're gonna be the problem solvers of the future.”