Has This 15 Year Old Shown Us A Picture of Helicopters From The Future?

Contest Victor's Prize Winning Design Is A Real Innovation

Try to envision a tractor-trailer rig that's powered by the sun and can be flown in either manned or unmanned modes.

A country-wide competition seeking futuristic helicopter designs from kids has been won by a 15 year old Collierville High School sophomore named Vance Hudson.

The Igor Sikorsky Youth Innovator Award comes with the prize of a $1,000 scholarship and a trip to the aviation corporation's main office in Connecticut. Hudson's award winning design and idea envision a future, specifically the year 2050, where a very light helicopter will be able to disassemble itself in order to deliver large payloads, leaving cargo components behind.

Sikorsky is a name that all in the helicopter aviation community associate with innovation. Igor Sikorsky, whose namesake company is an industry giant, headed a team that created the design for and flew the first truly viable American helicopter.

Helping the Helicopter Industry Embrace The Future

As the aviation industry evolves, we anticipate that we are entering a period of unprecedented innovation. The designs of the future may enable helicopters to play a vital role in emerging applications. Ours is an industry built by dreamers. The engineers who build helicopters often began drawing them as children. Our pilots have usually spent their whole lives wishing they could get in the cockpit before they ever step a foot inside one.

People always associate show business, rock 'n' roll and the entertainment world as the province of dreamers. But we know that pilots and engineers and mechanics and everybody else in our industry possesses the same imaginative qualities that have always fueled the growth of the American dream.

As the race to find qualified pilots to meet the demands of an increasingly diverse helicopter industry progresses, we have to take every effort we can to applaud and encourage the efforts undertaken by organizations such as the Igor Sikorsky company's award. They are truly paving the path for the dreamers of today to find their way into the helicopter aviation industry of tomorrow.

To learn more about aviation opportunities available to the helicopter dreamers of today, call Upper Limit Aviation at 1-855-HELIEDU.