A Close-Up Look at Possible Aviation Careers : Education: Antelope Valley high school students take advantage of key area industry to learn about jobs.

PALMDALE —  The blackish B-2 thunders over the runway, rising at a 45-degree angle.

It banks sharply, cutting a tight U around the nearby control tower filled with visitors. Overlapping teen-age voices and laughter in the tower stops abruptly, replaced by a single chorus:

“Oooooh.”

Lucius Hope grins broadly, happy with the effect of the plane’s fly-by on the 10 high school students crammed into the Palmdale tower, where he is air traffic manager.

“Most people have to pay to see that,” Hope said.

The passes are close enough to drown out normal conversation in the tower, but the teen-agers still peer intently through a handful of shared binoculars to view the plane’s “touch-and-go” exercise. They are here to see, hear and touch as many flight-related experiences as possible.

Nineteen Antelope Valley High School District students--the other half were visiting the air field’s fire station during the B-2 fly-by--spent last week learning about careers in aviation.

After hours spent touring Edwards Air Force Base, NASA, Rockwell Operations and Northrop aerospace companies and the Palmdale Airport, they are more excited than ever about aviation, one of the Antelope Valley’s leading industries.

“This is really cool,” said Michael Lantz, 15, who will be a junior at Antelope Valley High School this fall and plans to pursue a career in computer-related aviation.

He is typical of the group--serious enough about aviation to spend a hot, dry five days of summer at the Aviation Career Education Academy hosted by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The program was created in 1971 by a Juvenile Court judge in Virginia who wanted to motivate youths to stay in school. It was originally handled by the Army Reserve and Reserve Officers Assn. The FAA became involved in 1976.

The FAA’s role increased over the years and in 1992 the agency conducted 62 ACE sessions stressing the importance of education in preparing for a career. The program is no longer exclusively for problem students. This is the first time it has been offered in Palmdale.

Palmdale Airport is a regular training, production and testing center for a variety of aircraft. It has the shortest control tower of a major airport in the country, according to Hope, and is considered a good site because of its good long-range visibility and remoteness.

As the first group descended the tower’s spiral staircase, Hope said he was pleased by what the students already knew and the intelligent questions they asked.

Designed to give students more than just a wing and a prayer for choosing a career path--and admittedly favoring aviation--organizers want to offer the ACE program as an annual event for Antelope Valley high schools. The $125 tuition per student was covered this year by an FAA grant, said June Battey, career preparation coordinator for the district.

“What we’re hoping is they will have seen a lot of different jobs available in the aviation industry. That they’ll see there are a lot of invisible jobs they may not have thought about before,” Battey said.

The message seemed to be received by the students.

“You get a lot of information about career choices. They stock you up,” said Henry Scales, 18, a recent graduate of Highland High School.

Scales said he learned about a variety of jobs in the aviation industry, and is encouraged about his plans to become a pilot.

Although the majority of the students hope to have careers in aviation, those with no ambition to ride on a plane as anything but a passenger were equally excited to take part.

Barbara Bartosh, a 16-year-old Antelope Valley High student, wants to be a psychologist but still considers her week in the program a valuable learning experience.

“They’ve all seen planes, they’ve all gone on planes--I never have. I got to see a lot of things (that) without this program I never would have,” Barbara said.

William Parrish, 17, said the tour of Rockwell Operations was the most interesting and informative.

“I wanted to do this because I’m into computers a lot,” William said. “Virtual reality, I think, is the future. When they talked about flight simulators, that’s a type of virtual reality.”