Lessons Learned: Developing Flight Tracking and Messaging Systems for Christian Nonprofit Organizations

About Lessons Learned: Developing Flight Tracking and Messaging Systems for Christian Nonprofit Organizations

Abstract

Since the dawn of missionary aviation in the late 1940s, missionary pilot’s spouses have kept track of an airplane’s safe progress during flight by listening to the crackle and hiss of a high frequency radio. They would wait by the radio all day long for voice position reports made by the pilot en route. While visual reckoning of the pilot’s position sufficed for decades, technologies like the Global Positioning System (GPS) and radio data links now promise more reliable information on flight status. Commercial aircraft have used a sophisticated digital data link system for years, but a Christian missionary organization named JAARS, sending small planes into remote locations for Bible translation work, has more recently developed a simpler, lower-cost solution. Nevertheless, this system has failed to attract investment by the broader aviation community. Thus, for the past three years, senior students at Messiah College have developed alternative solutions for Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) and United Indian Mission (UIM), under the counsel of Mission Safety International (MSI), by taking into account the specific needs and policies of each organization in the field. MAF replicated one of the prototypes for further testing, but a version that completely satisfies field requirements has yet to be achieved. Currently, Messiah is cooperating with JAARS to adapt their low-cost system to the specific needs and policies of MAF. Faculty and students have been motivated, beyond the academic requirement, to invest and develop technical talents so as to serve organizations that spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, in word and deed, and specifically to support pilots who put their lives at risk. This paper reviews the previous flight tracking and text messaging projects at Messiah College, and emphasizes how 1) current project continuity has been enhanced by the Integrated Projects Curriculum (IPC) implemented in the Messiah College engineering curriculum, 2) cooperating across multiple organizations using field-proven technology retains broader satisfaction among users while engineering adaptations to meet specific organizational needs, and 3) designing for broader marketability gives engineering students realistic experience that better serves the wider missionary aviation community. In conclusion, the concepts illustrated here may serve other Christian engineering educators attempting to establish or maintain projects involving faculty and student participation, especially those that meet needs overlooked by the secular marketplace.