UTC students enjoy engineering experience at Sultan

HMS Sultan welcomed 40 University Technical College (UTC) students from across England recently for an interactive day of activities at the home of Royal Navy engineering.

The visits which took place across two days were designed to inspire the youngsters, from year’s 10 & 11, to explore Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

HMS Sultan is the Royal Navy’s primary engineering Establishment and is home to both The Defence College of Technical Training’s Royal Naval Air Engineering & Survival Equipment School (RNAESS) and the Defence School of Marine Engineering (DSMarE).

During the visits the students enjoyed hands-on activities in both schools, with helicopters and air survival equipment (RNAESS) and gas turbines and diesel engines (DSMarE) among the complex machinery examined.

Visit Liaison Officer Lieutenant Dan Hobin said, “The UTC visits provide an invaluable opportunity for HMS Sultan to inspire the engineers of the future.

“The students are able to engage with enthusiastic young RN engineers currently completing their professional phase 2 training here while gaining a practical understanding of engineering principles in an authentic training environment. I hope this has helped to ignite their enthusiasm to pursue a career in engineering.”

Derby UTC student Leah O’Donnell said, “Everything has been so new to me. We’ve learned how to take a pump apart and put it back together and how to fix an engine and this morning we took a wheel off a helicopter and also put a propeller on and I also tried on a survival kit.”

“The hands-on stuff has been really good, especially learning to put everything back together. I never would have thought I’d have been able to do any of this.”

The students who took part came from six different Royal Navy affiliated UTCs who will be looking to enter teams next year within the Royal Navy Engineering Challenge 2018, a design and build competition aimed at promoting STEM subjects to those within Key Stage four & five.

Scarborough UTC student Calista Allen said, “I was really surprised to hear about all the different things that the Navy do and I especially enjoyed sitting in a helicopter that’s recently been used and finding out about what all the different buttons are used for.”

“I am really looking forward to coming back for the engineering challenge next year.”