By MATT LINDSEY

POTSDAM -- A Potsdam High School student won top honors again at the Dr. Nelson Ying Tri-Region Science and Engineering Fair near Syracuse and placed third at Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Pittsburgh, Pa.

"My project is a new way of creating gust suppression," according to Scott Bollt.

Bollt was awarded $1,000 for his first place project in Syracuse.

He created a gust suppression system to regulate the amount of lift the wings on an aircraft create.

When a gust of air, turbulence, changes the airflow over the wing, the system reacts by moving the flaps on the wing so that the change in airflow does not change the lift that the wing creates.

"My system works by sensing the properties of the air in front of the wing, and then using those properties to model lift. The wing I’m using the system on is an extruded NACA 0014 section that I designed and built in my 3d printer," he said.

According to Bollt the system can be implemented on wings with fly-by-wire control.

"I think it was chosen because I was tackling quite a large problem. Also, there were lots of small steps that, when combined, create a complex whole," he said.

This project was not quite as labor intensive as last year’s project, Bollt said. He bought a 3D printer with his prize money and birthday money from last year so that he could design and print the parts needed in less than a day.

"This was a huge time saver because to design a part last year, I would have to design the methods to build the part, then design the methods to build the tools to build the part, then design the methods to build the tools to build the tools to build the tools to build the parts and so on.

As an added bonus, he said the finished parts were usually stronger and always more accurate than what he could achieve last year.

This lead to a much higher signal to noise ratio.

"The graphs I achieved this year looked almost the exact same with ten averaged samples per data point vs. 10,000 averaged samples per data point, which is something that would have been impossible before," he said.

Bollt said he plans to put the money in the bank and then use it as a makeshift research endowment so that if he needs money for his next project he can take a portion of it out allowing for his research to be less constricted by money.