Donate now to help students at Farmington High School start a plane-building program!
In 2025, we need to raise $20,000 from the community to complete the funding needed to establish this ‘Flying Tigers’ program. We can do it with your help! Every donation of any size helps.
Please donate today and help us make our goal.
Yes! Starting in September 2025, students at Farmington High School plan to begin a hands-on program to build actual aircraft. The airplane? It’s an all-metal RV-12iS two seat recreational aircraft, produced in kit form by the Van’s Aircraft Co. of Oregon.
Under a program dubbed the ‘Flying Tigers’ (after the school’s mascot), the first plane will take two years to build. When finished and certified as flight-worthy by the FAA, each aircraft is sold on the open market, with the proceeds going to pay for the next set of kits. It’s a self-sustaining program that does has no direct cost to local property taxpayers!
The program is based on similar high school student plane-building programs already underway in Manchester and Lebanon, N.H.
But to launch the Farmington program, the Aviation Museum must raise a minimum of $280,000 to cover the first set of kits, plus specialized tooling needed in the workshop and many other one-time costs needed to get things off the ground.
To date, we’ve raised $209,000. This has been thanks to generous donations from Exeter Volvo, the Thomas W. Haas Charitable Foundation, Meredith Village Savings Bank, the Anagnost Companies, and many local residents. It’s a great foundation, but we still have work to do.
That’s where you come in. In 2025, the Aviation Museum is seeking donations from the public to help complete the first stage of funding for the Farmington ‘Flying Tigers’ plane-build. It’s your chance for your charitable donation to make a real difference!
Join us in raising $20,000 to complete first-stage funding for the ‘Flying Tigers’ student plane-building project at Farmington High School. A donation of any size will make a difference. Every gift is tax-deductible, and will help establish a program that could change a young person’s life.
Thank you and please give generously!
For more information and updates about the program, visit our Farmington High School Flying Tigers page.
Below is a picture of the aircraft they’re building. This Van’s Aircraft RV-12iS was completed by students at the Manchester School of Technology in August, 2022.
