SE Oklahoma News

Southeastern Oklahoma State University hosted the National Intercollegiate Flying Association’s (NIFA) Region IV SAFECON Oct. 16-20.

The SE Flight Team finished third in the SAFECON Championship, trailing only LeTourneau University and Oklahoma State University. The first and second place teams receive automatic bids to the national competition in May in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

However, Southeastern is not out of the running – the SE Flight Team will learn if it’s strong third place finish is enough for an invitation to the nationals by the end of the year.

Southeastern also finished second in flying events and third in ground events.  A number of SE team members earned top 10 finishes to bolster the overall team effort.

“I am very proud of our team’s progress, as we showed great improvement over last year,’’ said Kyle Thomas, Chief Flight Instructor and Flight Operations Manager at the SE Aviation Sciences Institute. “We were only 19 points behind the second place team. And the weather was beautiful and it was a great week of competition.’’

Following are the results from the SAFECON competition hosted by Southeastern, including individual results for SE flight team members:

SAFECON Championship

• 1st place               LeTourneau University                  248 points
• 2nd place              Oklahoma State                           189 points
• 3rd place               Southeastern                               170 points
• 4th place               Louisiana Tech                               68 points
• 5th place               Delta State                                    51 points
• 6th place               Texas State Tech Col.                    32 points

Flight Events Championship       SE     2nd place

Ground Events Championship   SE     3rd place

Top Scoring Contestants

• Peyton Kirby                      4th place               34 points
• Jinseong Park                    9th place               28 points
• Nathan Lopez                  11th place               27 points
• Kyle Lyons                       12th place               26 points

Aircraft Preflight

• Kyle Lyons                        3rd place
• Damian Ramirez               8th place

Aircraft Recognition

• Luke Weigel                    7th place

Computer Accuracy (E6B)

• Peyton Kirby                    1st place
• Jinseong Park                  6th place

Ground Training (SIM)

• Nathan Lopez                7th place
• Jinseong Park                8th place

Message Drop

• Peyton Kirby                 1st place
  • Braden Weber
• Luke Weigel                 4th place
  • Tatiana Beach
• Alex Craycraft              8th place
  • Nathan Lopez

Power Off Landing

• Jinseong Park                1st place
• Alex Craycraft               4th place
• Nathan Lopez               5th place
• Braden Weber              6th place

Short Field Landing

• Nathan Lopez                  5th place
• Braden Weber                 9th place

Traditional Navigation

• Kyle Lyons                        2nd place
  • Braden Weber
• Peyton Kirby                    4th  place
  • Jinseong Park

Unlimited Navigation

• Daniel Hair                        6th place
  • Alex Craycraft

Original source can be found here