Aero Engineering course

1. Aero Engineering course was first introduced by the UTM as a joint-academic program at diploma level with the Malaysian air forces, Tentera Udara DiRaja Malaysia (TUDM) in the early '80s.

2. Initially, all the student intakes were the engineering officers of TUDM. By the time I joined UTM in '86, the program was already opened to civilian students and also offered as the undegraduate bachelor degree.

3. There were few TUDM engineering officers seconded to UTM for few years to be the teaching staff. Among these officers was one Kol. Baharudin. When I joined he already back to the TUDM. Mej. Abdul Latiff bin Taha was the head of the aero group (i.e. Head of Aero Panel). Mej. Latiff later went back to Mindef and retired as full colonel.

4. The aero engineering course was under the Thermo-Fluid Department (Jabatan Haba Bendalir), Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Abas Abd Wahab (now Prof. Dr.) was the Head of Department.

Saladin Jaszle Jasmin

Major (Rtd) Ir. Saladin Jaszle bin Jasmin was an undergraduate (degree) student in the early 90's at UTM Skudai campus.
He was the president of Aero Club (student's club for aero engineering students at UTM).
I did not teach that batch but I remember him as a very active student (i.e. the aero club president, a very smartly dressed, handsome and good-looking, very popular among the girl students etc).
I think his batch was the one that did the hot-air-ballon project under the supervision of Wan Zaidi Wan Omar. The project was part of the design subject and later continued as aero club's project.
I believe the project was a succesful one in proving the concept (and making student excited about aero engineering courses) and something to be proud of by the students, considering the financial constraints and other limitations they had faced ( i.e. ballon envelope too small, carriage basket is heavier than expected etc etc).

Remarks from Wan Zaidi - "This about the hot air balloon. Whatever happen during the project was not suppose to happen. But let this be a lesson to every engineer. What happened was, every team member was so concerned with completing the project that nobody noticed so simple a mistake. During the flight testing of the balloon (twice) it could only lift itself without the payload (in both occasion). I had to do the design review pronto. And it was found that, the weight of the hot air inside the balloon was not calculated. Apparently the weight came up to the weight of two person. Well, the boys (1 girl followed the progress of the project as she was interested in everything aero at that time) had sweated and had some fun out of the project. I say they truly learned something".
When he graduated from UTM , he was recruited as an engineering officer with TUDM and later on attachment as the TUDM lecturer to the Kolej Tentera Udara in Alor Setar serving under PM Dr. Zulkifli Latiff (Allahyarham) and Othman Ayob (now still at KTU as a professor Madya and Head of Academics).
[Note: There are two 'Saladin' (of ex-UTM aero students) joined TUDM - another one was Mejar Saladin Kamarudin (diploma aero). Both had the rank of major in TUDM and certainly many people got confuse as both of them were UTM graduates. - Saladin Kamarudin now left the airforce and in business. He is very active in Facebook].

Saladin Jaszle was later recruited to a special armed forces project and during this period he came back few times to Aero Lab with his team. Together with Wan Zaidi, we did some wind tunnel testings in the old 'blue' wind tunnel of Aero Lab before the new tunnel was ready.
He left the armed forces with rank of major in around 2003 or 2004 after he got his P.Eng. status. He joined an oil & gas international engineering design company as a director based in Kuala Lumpur. (He is a big shot now in oil & gas).

Here is what I found about him from google search:

"Ir. Saladin Jaszle Bin Jasmin is a Senior Engineer in OPE Malaysia since 2007.He has about 14 years of experiences in Oil & Gas (onshore & offshore), Aerospace, Manufacturing and Petrochemical plants projects with experiences in design, fabrication, installation and commissioning of subsea equipments, flowline/pipeline, piping, pressure vessels, storage tanks, turbomachinery, aircraft design, composite structure, heat exchangers, equipment skids and also various packaged of mechanical system design. He pursued his Masters in Mechanical Engineering from University of Technology, Malaysia."

I still very much in contact with him now and whenever I was in Kuala Lumpur for work as we are more or less in the same line of works.
The last time we met was in early November 2009, he treated me with 'nasi kandar' at Restoran Yassin of Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman, KL.
Note:
1. Saladin, I am waiting for a nice photo of you to be inserted in the blog. Tq.

Aznizar Ahmad-Yazid

Aznizar Ahmad-Yazid (left photo) was a Diploma student in Aero Engineering around '86-'87 when I first started teaching at UTM Jalan Gurney.
I remember he was in the same batch in my aerodynamics class together with Md Nizam Dahalan and others.
(I can't remember what grade he got for his aerodyamics class but the top student in that batch was Md Nizam).
He later continued his undergraduate overseas then did his post graduate studies (Masters). He joined Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) as an academic staff and among the pioneer in Aero engineering courses at UPM.
I met him few times when he was with aero UPM and when he came back and visited the Aero Lab few times.
I lost contact with him for awhile when I left UTM until recently I found that he is no longer at UPM but now attached with Universiti Malaya (UM).
He regularly appears on the Facebook and this is his intro line on the Facebook:
"An average person with simple needs. Initially trained as an aero MRO artisan, aznijar went beyond that to designing aerocrafts and performing aerodynamic analyses and experiments. Currently busy figuring better ways to cut metals at UM."
Among the ex-students, he is among the one I am still in contact with (at least through the net...)
I am happy that now he is also an academics.
I wish him well in his career at UM and hope that he will become a professor one day.

Wan Zaidi Wan Omar

UPDATE - Wan Zaidi (WZO) sent me some corrections and comments on the posting which I publish below. Thank you WZO.

ORIGINAL POSTING Here is Wan Zaidi Wan Omar (WZO), a very close friend and colleague when I was with Aero group UTM and until now.
Upon graduation from Mancaster Univ. UK, he joined UTM at the end of 1985 (few months before me).
Wan Zaidi mainly lectures on aircraft design and structures.
Infact, his engineering fundamentals are very strong that whenever there is not enough lecturer in other aero subjects, Wan Zaidi will be the first choice.
Once I followed him back for holiday to his kampung in Selising, Pasir Putih, Kelantan (in 1987).
It was at the height of UMNO' 1987 crisis (Dr M 'sTeam A vs Tengku Razaleigh's Team B).
I remember that his late father was a strong supporter of the Team B and gave us a very strong and emotional lecture on politics-of-the-day.... His father just passed away during the last Ramadan (Sept 2009).
Wan Zaidi, being a Kelantanese, is also very enterprising person. I was his 'assistant' in selling murtabak and burger when he and his Kelantanese friends took-up a stall at the UTM Open Day in Jalan Semarak.
I also remember Wan Zaidi had a big motorbike (a 250cc bike is considered big those day) during that time when we were in Jalan Gurney.
I used to 'tumpang' him few times those day as I did not have a car yet.
He had an interest in the world motorsport and grand prix and I think he was a great fan of Mamola (world champion those day?).
Comment from Wan Zaidi "The great rivalry in Motorcycle 500cc GP in the mid 80s was between Randy Mamola (riding Yamaha) and Freddie Spencer (riding Honda). I was actually rooting for Spencer. And he mostly won many races in the earlier 80s (including one year when he won the 125cc, 250cc and the 500cc GPs), and Mamola the latter 80s.

When he got married to a nice lady, Kamariah (an assistant registrar at the 'unit penyelidikan dan pembangunan' of UTM with full-fledge 'tudung and dakwah' dress), they came to work on his motorbike (everyone teased him with this newly-wed joke that Wan Zaidi always applied emergency brake when riding with Kamariah!) Dr. Kamariah later joined as a lecturer in the 'Fakulti Pengurusan UTM'.
How do I see Wan Zaidi as a person?
Wan Zaidi is a very pleasant and cheerful person with stress-free, very positive about life and everything else, very tolerant of people, hardly show his anger or temper on others.
Many many ex-students still keeping in touch with him and still asking his free-professional advice when they cannot solved engineering problems at work.
With these qualities, it is only natural that he is well-liked by colleagues and definitely earned great respect among students as well.
I visited his facebook recently. Many ex-students including Prakash, Kannan, Saladin Kamarudin and many many others were still in contact with him.
His interest now probably lies on the wind turbine researches which is part of his on-going PhD works (the above photo I got from his Facebook is probably at the site of one huge wind turbine (?)he visited probably somewhere in UK or Europe?).
Comments from Wan Zaidi " the photo was taken in Falkirk, Scotland. The background is the Falkirk Wheel, not a wind turbine at all. The Falkirk Wheel actually transfers boats between two waterways, which are at two different levels. You can see that the wheel actually carry two "tubs" at the ends of the big spoke. These two tubs actually carry the boats, from the top stream to the bottom stream, "and vice versa"
Reply to WZO: I did mention '....is probably...' I should have qualifed it as just an 'intelligent' guessing... turn out to be 'not-so-intelligent'...never been to Scotland myself...

Shuhaimi Mansor

Here is a photo of Shuhaimi (Assoc. Prof. Ir. Dr. Shuhaimi Mansor) taken from his Facebook page.
I have to mention Shuhaimi very early in the blog as I consider him as one of my closest aero friend and colleague when I was at UTM.
To these days we still meet regularly outside UTM, sometimes for family dinners or outing and also when we have regular meetings of the engineers at IEM Southern Branch (of course everybody else in aero group are also my close friends as well - please don't take in negatively! - I will write on all of you later ..).
Shuhaimi now heads the Aero Lab and the UTM-LST wind tunnel facility. (This project is the one in which I am particularly proud to be associated with the aero group of UTM. I also had an enjoyable working experiences with him for many years since inception until operational of the WT facility).
In term of service at UTM, Shuhaimi is my senior (as well as age - he is 2-year senior of me). He joined UTM as the Assistant Lecturer 'B' immediately after he completed his diploma in Aero Engineering at UTM in early 80's.
When I started with the aero group in 1986, I think Shuhaimi was overseas at Glasgow University, UK completing his undegraduate bachelor degree.
So, you can see that Shuhaimi is really one of the aero UTM's thouroughbred with experiences both as a student as well as an academic staff. (another person could be Md Nidzam Dahalan - photo)

More on Shuhaimi later.....

The Early Years - the beginning....

I came back to Malaysia upon graduated with aero engineering degree from Wichita State University, Kansas USA in 1986. I reported duty at Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam (JPA) in Kuala Lumpur sometimes around June that year - I got the JPA scholarship for my undegraduate study in US - and somehow or rather I was directed to UTM Jalan Gurney (now known as Jalan Semarak).

The first person in UTM I met was En. Abdullah Ali (left photo) who was at that time the public relation officer and assistant registrar. He happened to graduate from the same university (USM Penang) with one of my uncle, Hj. Hashim Awang. (YB Datuk Hj.Abdullah Ali is now an assemblyman of Bukit Naning, Muar Johor and I still bumped into YB once in a while when he was in JB).


I was then directed to the faculty of Mechanical Engineering (FKM) and met the dean at that time i.e. PM Abdullah Idris (known among the FKM old timers like me as PM Dollah Deris - left photo). I can't remember well on the details but I understood at hat time that the Aero Engineering was the newly-introduced course at UTM starting in the early 80's. It just happened that two of the Aero lecturers at that time just left the aero group to join the private sector. They were Syed Hashim Waffa and Aslam Khan. I think both of them (or at least Syed Hashim) joined Airod Sdn Bhd, an MRO company servicing mostly TUDM aircrafts.
So PM Dollah hinted to me that the Aero group is in need of 2 staff immediately and he even asked me if I know somebody that I can recommend. So I told this to the only person I knew with the aero degree during that time i.e. Nazri Jaafar (Nazri now is still with the aero group as Prof. Dr. Mohammad Nazri Jaafar - left photo). You see, Nazri and I were in the same batch and graduated at the same time from Wichita State....

So to cut the lengthy story short, I reported duty as the Assistant Lecturer 'A' with the Aero Engineering Group, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, UTM Jalan Gurney on 1st August 1986. I believe Nazri also reported on the same day (or if not so maybe a few days later).

to be continued....

Welcome

Salam to all and Welcome to this blog.

When you have been at one place for 17 years, I am sure you have a lot of fond memories of the place which you like to share with others.

I was with the Aero Group, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM Skudai) from 1986 when I graduated until I left on optional early retirement at the age of 40 in 2003.
I started my engineering career with aero group at UTM Jalan Gurney K Lumpur (now Jalan Semarak) in 1986. In 1988 to 1990, I was at Southampton UK doing postgraduate study under UTM scholarship.
When I came back in 1990, I reported back to aero group in UTM campus in Skudai.
In 1994 I was the head of aero lab and also the project leader responsible for the setting up of the UTM Low Speed Wind Tunnel until I left in 2003..

Obviously there are many interesting things and fond memories (good, not so pleasant etc etc). But one thing for sure, I met many many wonderful people whom are my friends, colleagues, students etc (some of these ex-students are also now my close friends).

So now that I have a bit of extra time in between project works, my intention is to use this blog as a common channel of networking and links with all the people who have been associated with the Aero Group at UTM.
I will try to bring back some nostalgic memories of Aero Group UTM.

I guess everybody is blogging nowadays - even school children and our elders!

If you are one of the people who has been with Aero Group UTM - be it as a student, lecturers, staff, researchers etc etc, do leave me a comment and share some of the memories of Aero Group of UTM or email me. Everybody including the general public are welcome to drop a note here in this blog. After all it is a blog.....

Contribution of articles especially (with 'oldies' photos) are very much welcomed and will be gratefully acknowledged.
I, however will not be too ambitious of blogging.
I consider my journalistic skills are just average as I write in a simple plain language (with even sometimes minor grammatical errors etc).
If I can update this blog on a weekly basis, it is certainly an achievement already.
My target is a weekly posting and to put more photos so that it will be more interesting and appealing to all.
Happy reading!
MKM
Mohd Khir Muhammad

p.s. the above is my recent photo of 2009. I am searching to post oldies photos of me at UTM.