“The AIAA Niagara Frontier Section is both a link to the past and a bridge to the future. Western New York was once a hotbed of aerospace development in the mid-20th century. I find that the AIAA Niagara Frontier Section has and continues to be an important link to our rich aerospace past.”— Paul Schifferle, Vice-President Flight, Calspan
The joint meeting with NASA Chief Historian Dr. William Barry, scheduled for March 19th, is cancelled due to COVID-19 — as is April’s meeting with Dr. Asif Siddiqi. Dr. Barry’s talk is rescheduled as a Zoom webinar on April 30th — the section’s first.
The fourth Niagara Frontier Section Zoom webinar features Rogers Smith, retired test pilot from the National Research Council of Canada, Calspan, and NASA, who retired as NASA Chief Test Pilot. His talk, My Journey: Honest Ed’s to the Blackbird at Mach 3.2, is the first in a series of speakers from Canada or speaking on Canadian topics. Smith is an inductee in both Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame and the Niagara Frontier Aviation and Space Hall of Fame.
Rogers Smith receives the AIAA Chanute Flight Test Award at the AIAA Aviation Conference in Chicago “For career-long achievements and contributions to the safe practices and teaching of flight testing, particularly in-flight controls and flying qualities.” At the award lecture he reprises his Niagara Frontier Section talk.
Dr. Dan Haulman, retired head of the organizational histories section at the Air Force Historical Research Agency, speaks at the section’s first hybrid meeting — broadcast over Zoom to members in the U.S. and Canada and to a member of the AIAA History Committee in Portugal.
The AIAA Niagara Frontier Section commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Bell X-1 breaking the sound barrier with a banquet in the Calspan Flight Research hangar in Niagara Falls — several hundred feet from the former Bell plant where the aircraft was designed and built. Keynote speaker Dr. Richard Hallion, who also spoke at Edwards on the 50th anniversary, is introduced by Dr. William Barry. The event is attended by 130 professional and student members, and by William Swenson, age 100, the last surviving engineer who worked on the original Bell X-1. A walking tour visits the loading pit where the X-1 was loaded into its B-29 mother aircraft.
Geographical Growth of the Section
De-charter of the Southern Tier Section. Due to declining membership, the AIAA Southern Tier section is formally de-chartered and its members and geographical area are incorporated into the Niagara Frontier Section. This includes approximately 40 professional members and 30 students, including the student branch at Cornell University.
Incorporation of Canadian Members. The AIAA Regional Engagement Activities Division (READ) includes Region VII members in Canada into their closest U.S. sections. For Niagara Frontier this means the gain of over 300 professional and student members in eastern Ontario and all of Quebec — including Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. The section’s AIAA classification rises from Small to Large. Eight new Canadian student branches join the section: Carleton University (Ottawa), Concordia University (Montreal), École de Technologie Supérieure (Montreal), École Polytechnique de Montreal, McGill University, Royal Military College of Canada (Kingston), Ryerson Polytechnic University (Toronto), and the University of Toronto.
To celebrate the binational nature of the section, an informal insignia is created featuring the two most famous aircraft to come from the American and Canadian parts of the section: the Bell X-1 and the Avro CF-105 Arrow.
De-charter of the Northeastern New York Section. AIAA READ de-charters the Northeast New York section. After a Zoom meeting between Niagara Frontier, the New England Section, and AIAA National, the territory is split at Rome, New York — with Rome and the Air Force Research Laboratory going to Niagara Frontier. The student branches at Clarkson and Syracuse Universities join Niagara Frontier; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute goes to New England.
The highest-attended Niagara Frontier Zoom meeting — 185 participants — features Capt Kristin Wolfe, then the U.S. Air Force F-35 demonstration pilot. Attendance is attributed to interest in the F-35 (especially from Canadian members as the RCAF had not yet selected the aircraft), ongoing COVID lockdowns, and the novelty of a female fighter pilot. Average Zoom attendance has since settled into the 30–60 range.
The AIAA Region I Student Conference is held at SUNY Buffalo. Over 120 attendees make 30 presentations. The evening includes dinner in the Calspan Flight Research hangar surrounded by experimental fly-by-wire aircraft, followed by a tour of the Niagara Aerospace Museum. Alice Bowman delivers the keynote address.
Dr. Eleonora Botta of the University at Buffalo receives the inaugural Niagara Frontier Section Young Professional Award at the Hall of Fame dinner and induction ceremony. The late Henry Ph. Heubusch, former section chair, is simultaneously inducted into the Niagara Frontier Aviation and Space Hall of Fame.
Over 100 student members from UB and RIT attend a Saturday afternoon meeting at the Niagara Aerospace Museum. Paul Schifferle, vice president Flight at Calspan, speaks on Calspan’s fleet of airborne testbeds. Admission is $5 for students and $10 for professionals, with a Wegman’s sub buffet provided by the section. This is the fourth and most successful in the series of museum meetings.