The APOGEE English Press sat down with Nishant Kondekar, the coordinator of the Radio Control (RC) Club, to learn more about their work leading up to the fest. This APOGEE, the RC Club will be conducting Sky-High, a competition that requires participants to build and fly their own planes. The club will provide them with the plans and guides to build the plane as well as a kit containing all the parts. They will also conduct a workshop, and the participants will participate in a flying competition the next day. Nishant mentioned that this year, the club had added prize money and had increased focus on the flying component. He remarked that he expected the competition to get a little more intense this year due to the stakes involved. 

The club has been conducting this event for the past few years. Nishant explained that this meant that they had ‘a lot figured out already’, and that they only needed to work on streamlining the event and improving designs. He added that due to the increased emphasis on the flying component, the club had to create a new, more sophisticated model plane capable of aerobatic manoeuvres. He added that the work for this started a month or two before APOGEE. 

Talking about the problems faced by the club, Nishant elaborated on the difficulties they faced in manufacturing the kits due to pending approval on the budgeting of the event. He explained that the club made the kits themselves, sourcing corrugated plastic (coroplast) sheets and getting them laser cut at the Tinkering Lab. Nishant said that currently, the club was awaiting approval for the money to place orders for the coroplast sheets, but that it was possible to get the work done. He added that the Department of Sponsorship and Marketing had done a ‘very good’ job in sourcing vendors for electronics and other components and that the only issue was the lagging timeline.

Nishant said that over the last couple of years, they had been performing a more in-depth exploration of autonomous vehicles and robotics. The club has had projects increasing in complexity, with Nishant listing a drone that could fly autonomously and detect damages in solar panels as an example. 

Nishant called his work as the coordinator a ‘fun experience’. He stated that although he could not participate in events such as RoboWars this year, he was interested in them and would have done so had he had the time. 

In closing, Nishant asked the attendees to be less hesitant about participating in technical events. Admitting that the phrase ‘no prerequisites’ was not always true, he said that a lot of work went into creating the events and making them accessible to the general student body. He encouraged people to be more open to trying them out.