IA Club Field Trip to Lockheed Martin in Owego, NY

Before I write about the trip I took to Owego, NY last Friday to Lockheed Martin, I wanted to gloat about the beautiful weather that surrounded the Blue-White Game earlier today. Having gone to many (more than 10) Blue-White Games and sitting through the rain, postponements, and just miserable days, the last two years of great weather have been refreshing. However, a thunderstorm has set in and I figured I would post before I head to Quaker Steak with my dad.

An early morning

The only part of this trip that I regret was how early the day started. Like the D.C. trip, I had the great idea of not sleeping the night before, this time, it backfired on me. We left the IST parking lot around 5am. I was zonked to say the least.

Pre-Lunch activities

The first thing we got to see was the computer network security room. This was pretty cool. They had some errors popping up signifying a few software issues and we had to leave so that they could do their work. I think it would be really cool to work in a place like that. They had a few big screens in the front of the room and many charts, graphs, and software up and running monitoring the Owego network in real time so that any issues could be dealt with as soon as possible. Next they took us to the truck room. In this workshop, they were building the vehicles that will replace the Humvee. The machines in this room were very advanced, heavy, and expensive. Sadly, we weren’t allowed cell phones, cameras, or anything like that so I can’t give you any pictures. I’m sure there are some online, or some prototypes on the job right now. These trucks were very impressive, and that was just the beginning.

Next, we were taken to the Postal Service area of Lockheed. They created a program and machine that can read something like 94% of all addresses on letters. We wrote in many different colors and hand writing on different parts of the letter and this thing still read it perfectly. Then, they showed us a bigger machine that sorts the boxes at Post Offices. I’m not going to go into great detail about this part because of two reasons. One, I was way more interesting in the other amazing stuff they showed us and two, i was almost dead on my feet at this point.

Lunch

This places we go visit really know how to grab student’s attention with amazing lunches. What made this one even better was that all the food was made at Lockheed Martin in the cafeteria, and don’t let the cafeteria word lead you astray, this was the best cafeteria I’ve ever had food from. We had pizza and wings. The pizza was decent, but the wings were delicious and did not last long. I am a big wings guy, and they were the lift I needed i think. I was definitely awake after lunch.

Post-Lunch Craziness

After we left the conference room for lunch, things got a little ridiculous. They took us to where they are building helicopters for the military. They had 3 birds in the workshop and they were sweet. We couldn’t actually go inside one of them, for obvious reasons, but we were able to do basically anything else. They had a room in the workshop that cost $1.2 million to build I believe that was wall-to-wall covered with triangular Styrofoam. The stalag tight, stalag might way the room was set up made all sound be incapable of echoing. This made all voices sound flat, but allowed them to test the hyper-sensitive sensors on the helicopter. Moving on, we went to see an A-10 airplane they had in one of their hangers. It was definitely the first time I ever got to stare down the barrel of a Gatling gun. They had the plane in a few pieces and, again, we weren’t allowed inside the cockpit for obvious reasons, but overall it was really cool.

Simulation

Easily the room of the day was where they had many large big screens and some pretty innovative software. They had a cockpit from one of the helicopters, not an actual one, just a version for this video game type set up, that two people could sit in and fly a helicopter simulated in front of you on the screens. They said that pilots could be trained with this simulation and that they give feedback about what should be different or what really works like it does in real life. The rest of our day was spent in this room as we flew around a simulated Washington D.C. trying to shoot at ships or other plans flying in the air. It was basically the coolest video game I’ve ever played.

Wrap it up

That was basically it, the trip home went well and we were all able to catch up on some much needed rest. I would say that the trip was a complete success and that all students really had a great time. They are doing some really cool stuff at Lockheed Martin and I’m very glad I got the chance to witness their work first hand. I will be looking forward to more trips and also new innovations that Lockheed will surely be involved with it the future.