LEBANON — High school senior Tomas Kennelly wasn’t particularly interested in aviation, but when his school began taking applications for a new airplane-building program beginning in the fall, he was all in.

“I was like, man, building a plane just sounds incredibly cool,” he said.

Now, every weekday morning Kennelly and 13 of his classmates join two teachers and three community members in a converted three-bay garage, dubbed “the hangar,” behind the school track. There, they work together to assemble an airplane part by part, one rivet at a time.

They are Lebanon High School’s inaugural Take Flight program, and theirs is the 38th school in the country, and the second in the Granite State, to adopt the program, which began in Texas in 2016.

Take Flight is a partnership between the Lebanon School District, the Aviation Museum of New Hampshire, and Texas-based nonprofit Tango Flight, which provides the curriculum and technical assistance throughout the build process. Fundraising for the program is coordinated through the Aviation Museum.

Lebanon Superintendent Amy Allen was familiar with the Take Fight program from her time as assistant superintendent in the Manchester School District. The Manchester School of Technology launched the state’s first plane-building program in 2019. When word arrived that the Aviation Museum was accepting applications from schools interested in hosting a program, “we jumped on it,” Allen said.

Regardless of whether the students decide to go into aviation, “the skills are transferable to problem-solving, critical thinking and teamwork,” she said.

“One of the most impactful aspects of the program,” Allen said, is that it allows students to build relationships across grade levels and peer groups.

The high school received about 60 student applications for the program last spring, and the selection process did not hinge on prior mechanical or aviation experience.

“What impressed us was that they were not looking for academic achievement, but enthusiasm,” Jeff Rapsis, the Aviation Museum’s executive director, said.

The airplane is a Van’s Aircraft RV-12iS, a small, lightweight two-seater that measures 20 feet from propeller to tail.

It arrived in Lebanon this summer in six wooden crates containing 50,000 parts, ranging in size from large sheets of aluminum to individual rivets. Everyone in the hangar knows exactly how many rivets are included in the kit — 15,000. Every one of them must be installed according to FAA specifications.

On a Friday morning in October, the hangar was abuzz with concern about one particular rivet that had been installed incorrectly. It wasn’t clear if it could be removed without damaging anything around it, or whether the entire sheet of aluminum would need to be scrapped and reordered.

“We’ve had to reorder parts on a couple of occasions, but that’s also part of the learning process,” said Bonnie Robinson, Lebanon High School’s director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

On the corner of a whiteboard on the wall, a tally written in dry-erase marker said: “Days without error: 0”

The good news came later in the morning that the rivet could be replaced without needing to reorder the part.

“I didn’t even know what a rivet was at first,” Yiting Tian said, as he explained the different types of fasteners the plane requires, and the tools used to install them. Tian, a junior, hopes to become an Air Force pilot after high school.

“It’s new for everyone,” said Lebanon math teacher Bo Harwood, who is serving as one of two faculty assistants to the program. “It doesn’t matter if they’ve never turned a wrench, or if they’ve never done anything with their hands. We start from the ground up,” learning to use tools and practicing with pieces of scrap metal, he said.

A crucial component of the program’s viability is a group of about two dozen volunteer mentors from the local aviation community who spend one to three days a week in the hangar working with the students in small groups.

“Without the mentors, the program wouldn’t work,” Rapsis said. You can’t just “put kids in a room and ask them to build a plane,” he added.

There are 14 mentors in a regular rotation and another half-dozen who come in occasionally, said Robinson.

Dave Marcy, of Grantham, is a retired Boeing aerospace engineer who volunteers with the program three days a week. The group of four students at his worktable was just starting a new section of the plane and was carefully determining which part was which from a pile of similar-looking pieces. “Some of the kids didn’t even know how to hold a tool on the first day of class,” he said.

The workflow in the hangar is divided into three “lanes,” or stations that can work simultaneously on different parts of the plane. Each workstation is supervised by a mentor who oversees the work of four or five students.

“Some of the tasks are tedious,” aircraft mechanic and volunteer mentor Andy Gelston said. “But the kids haven’t lost their enthusiasm.”

The guidance of the mentors allows the students to learn on the fly even when things don’t go as planned, senior Reed Ferland said. “We’ve had to machine (grind) down tools to make them fit into spaces, things like that. And so having the mentors really helps us,” he said.

In addition to providing a hands-on project for students, the program’s purpose is to spark interest in aviation careers.

There is a “huge demand for professionals” in the fields of aviation and aerospace, Rapsis said, and the mentor program is an early opportunity for students to network in the field.

Senior Kyle Hines, of Plainfield, is working on his pilot’s license and plans to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University next year. He said he’s already applied some of the creative problem-solving he’s learned in the hangar to other aspects of his life. He drives a 1984 Ford F-150, “and there’s a lot of very, very weird and strange things that I need to do on it that I can’t find on YouTube,” he said. Using what he’s learned in the hangar, he’s been able to problem-solve his way to repairs on the truck.

For Kennelly, mornings in the hangar offer a respite from hectic days. “It’s a nice break where nothing outside the shop matters and you don’t need to worry about anything else,” he said.

The cost to launch Lebanon’s Take Flight program was $310,000, Rapsis said. That includes $100,000 to purchase the plane kit, $15,000 for the accompanying curriculum, and the costs for renovating what was an uninsulated three-bay garage into a workshop.

The program relies on grants and donations coordinated through the Aviation Museum. As of last week, Take Flight had raised $255,000 of the cost.

The Byrne Foundation funded the curriculum fee this year, Robinson said. In addition, U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., assigned $90,000 of Congressionally Directed Spending to the program.

Once the plane is complete, each member of the Take Flight team will have a chance to fly in it, then it will be sold to fund the next two-year project.

The completed plane should fetch somewhere between $120,000 and $130,000, Rapsis said. Because it is relatively easy to fly and includes side-by-side seating, it is especially popular among flight schools.

Once the program is up and running, it should pay for itself, Rapsis said.

The anticipated timeline for completing the plane is two years. Hines, the senior from Plainfield, expects to have his pilot license in a few months. He wants to come back when the plane is complete and fly it himself, but he’s not sure how his classmates feel about that.

“I think some people want me to fly it, but some people don’t, because it would be not good press if I don’t fly very well,” he said with a laugh.

Donations to Lebanon’s “Take Flight” program may be made online at aviationmuseumofnh.org. The Aviation Museum of New Hampshire is the fiscal agent for the program. Checks with the notation “Take Flight” in the memo section may be sent to the museum at 27 Navigator Road, Londonderry, N.H. 03053. Credit card donations may be made by calling 603-669-4877.

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.