Twenty-four young people experienced aspects of the aerospace world on Texada Island last month.
The annual Texada Aerospace Camp (July 23 to 26) attracted youth from across Canada, including a number from Powell River and Texada. The aim of the camp is to expose youth with an interest in planes and space to different aspects of the aerospace industry and potential career choices.
Highlights included a keynote talk by a NASA scientist who spoke about current projects and expressed hope that one of the camp’s attendees might travel on future interplanetary missions in spacecrafts under development.
At the camp, Canadian Armed Forces 442 Search and Rescue Squadron brought in a CH-149 Cormorant helicopter and demonstrated a long line rescue. Volunteers from the Courtenay Airpark took the youth up in small private planes, often in the co-pilot seat, which for some of them was the first time they had flown in a small aircraft. A group of local parachute enthusiasts strapped the students into harnesses and helped them catch the wind blowing across the fields at Texada/Gillies Bay Airport.
Central to the camp was the Airbuzz II flight simulator, which has made appearances at several events in Powell River and at air shows around the coast. The simulator is built into a section of a plane fuselage affixed to a trailer.
Youth fly the simulator from the pilot’s seat inside the fuselage, with three computer monitors acting as aircraft "windows" to show realistic images of the local area as they fly on simulated voyages.
The camp has been offered for 16 years and was the brainchild of Texada artist Olgierd (Doby) Dobrostanski, who also designed and built the Airbuzz II with a group of enthusiastic Texadans. Although he has passed the leadership of the camp on to Sheila McFarland, he still acts in an advisory role.
For more information on the camp, or to submit an expression of interest for 2026, contact McFarland at [email protected].
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