Legendary aerospace engineer helps propel Watsonville students to MESA Day victory

Watsonville High School (Santa Cruz County) MESA junior Gilbert Villicana steadied his shaking hand as he held his home-made model balsa-wood airplane cocked in its launcher. He pointed it upwards toward the ceiling of the cavernous gymnasium, paused for several seconds, and released. The plane shot to the top of the gym, then, as a large audience watched in silence, it slowly spiralled in wide loops for seven full seconds before landing softly at the back of the sports hall.

Cheers erupted. In the race to keep a plane aloft for the longest period of time, Villicana had triumphed, hands-down. It was April 23 at the Central California MESA Day Competition at CSU Fresno, and a new record had been set. Seven seconds may not sound like a lot, but as observers said, when watching a plane glide on the clock, it seems like an eternity.

There was an important person to whom Villicana owed a debt of gratitude in helping him win his third and most impressive championship since the eighth grade. After his teacher, parents and siblings, there was a retired world-renowned aerospace engineer who had given him a few tips on the way.

Villicana’s engineering coach was Alan Brown, former program manager and chief engineer at the Lockheed Corporation who led in the design of the F-117A Stealth Fighter. The super-secret aircraft, which was used extensively in the first gulf war, was created in 1978. It is configured in the shape of a large, flat delta, or arrowhead, designed to be virtually invisible to radar, and difficult to spot with the naked eye as well.

For the last 11 years, Brown has donated most of his Saturdays and some of his weekdays to assisting classroom teachers as they help educationally disadvantaged students like Villicana learn the fundamentals of physics and engineering design so they can build better devices for the annual MESA Day competitions.

“My daughter thought this would give me something to do in retirement,” said Brown, who is often periodically interviewed by the Discovery and History Channels to provide commentary about stealth technology. “It’s tremendously rewarding to work with these kids, to watch as they begin to understand this stuff and get them involved and thinking about college.”

“We are so lucky to have him,” said Watsonville High MESA teacher Grace Patiño’s, who has taught math at Watsonville since 1984. “There is such a tremendous opportunity for retired engineers and scientists to make a difference in these students’ lives, and Alan is the essence of what can be achieved when that
happens.”

“I would build what I thought was a pretty good plane, then he’d come over and show me a better way,” said Villicana. “We did this over and over and over, and each time I found I could do it more quickly and easily on my own.”

Brown has helped Patiño’s develop the talents and efforts of many students over the years, also assisting students at a local middle school where his daughter teaches. Watsonville teams took first place in California in MESA competitions in 2003 and 2004 and went on to place third and fifth respectively in the MESA National Design Engineering Contests held those years in New Mexico.

Among the students he has helped Patiño’s teach is Daniel Campos-Ramirez, who took first place in last year’s Manila Bridge competition, which challenges students to build the greatest-load-bearing bridge out of scraps of Manila file folders. “The first year, we were disqualified,” said Campos-Ramirez. “But the following year, because of Mr. Brown and his help on the bridge construction, we came in first place.”

His mother Cindy Campos-Ramirez said she is very pleased with the impact of MESA and the Patiño’s/Brown partnership on her son’s academic career. “It’s not about a paycheck; Grace really cares, and MESA has been such a good influence on him,” she said. “It has opened up his eyes, motivated him and improved his study habits. I like it and I like him coming here.”

Brown recently walked around Patiño’s classroom helping out as students struggled with design elements, occasionally leading them to a whiteboard to review the physics of their inventions. He mentions an example of one of Patiño’s’s students who, as he puts it, “went from high school slouch to MIT scholar,” and others who have gone on to UC Berkeley, Stanford and UCLA.

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