ROGERS — Airplanes, engineering and aeronautics drew them to the Air Force Academy, but graduates said they stayed for other reasons.

The largest Arkansas class — 10 students — in the past 10 years will graduate the academy on Wednesday.

Cadet Jonathan Weed of Fayetteville said he’s always loved planes. Cadet Michael Tibbs of Rogers was recruited from the track team for his performance in the decathlon. Cadet Colton Steen of Bentonville grew up near Las Vegas watching the Air Force Thunderbirds fly.

All three will graduate with degrees in astronautical engineering, a feat they say is also unusual as they make up 10 percent of the graduates in their major.

“I think I chose the hardest major at the academy,” Weed said.

Weed spent five years in the Civil Air Patrol in Rogers as a Fayetteville High School student. He got his private pilot license before leaving for boot camp and now has more than 350 flight hours. He dreams of becoming a fighter pilot.

“I’d love to fly something fast and pointy,” Weed said.

His academy experience hasn’t been easy, but it has been worthwhile, he said. He’s visited China, Asia and Israel and learned a lot about flying.

He competes with the academy’s Power Flying Team in a T-51, which is essentially a souped-up Cessna 150, he said. But the 40-year-old planes are anything but tricked out. Pilots fly using steam gauges and handheld global positioning system units.

“We’re pretty much using the seat of our pants and our eyeballs,” Weed said.

Astronautical engineering majors take classes in rockets, astronautics and space mission design. As their senior project they flew a satellite, Falcon SAT-3, and helped build Falcon SAT-6.

Tibbs said he has always been fascinated with outer space. It takes three operators to fly the satellite, he said and they can only beam signal to it when it is in the right part of the sky.

“In many ways it’s like being a pilot. You have to fly, you have to orient the satellite,” he said.

He arrived at the military school because of the full-ride scholarship and the chance to study engineering.

“It basically is the reason I came. Military had nothing to do with it,” he said.

Boot camp, the 150 hours of classes, leadership expectations and survival training have changed him and given him lifelong friends, Tibbs said.

“You come here for certain reasons and you stay for other reasons,” he said.

Academics, military and athletics are all emphasized at the academy.

Steen learned to fly gliders at the academy, later becoming an instructor. Gliders are nonpowered aircraft towed to altitude and released to fly. The hardest part, Steen said, is flying in formation with the plane in front of you when you have no power.

“It’s kind of like a tow truck in the air,” he said.

He always loved engineering and space and found a way to link both through his major and academy, Steen said. He learned about the academy when he visited for a wrestling camp. Working with planes like the Thunderbirds he’d watched fly as a child became something worth competing for. Like Tibbs, he had not planned to enter the military.

“Every year here I find myself more invested,” he said.

Steen not only caught the desire to change the world, but he learned how he can make a difference, said his mother, Karen Steen.

As a parent she never had to worry he was going to get in trouble at school, that he wouldn’t eat or that his education would be sub-par.

“It was like he had a mother there in the academy,” she said.

She worried he wouldn’t have fun, but he’s made good friends, she said.

“It’s more than just college buddies. It’s the ‘I would give my life for you’ bond,” Karen Steen said.

Parents can find it hard when their children leave for boot camp, said Sharen Tibbs, president of the Arkansas U.S. Air Force Academy Parents’ Association. When her daughter went to college she could call, when Michael went to basic she watched the academy’s website for photos of what he was doing.

“It’s a different feeling,” she said.

But parents said they are proud their sons elected to serve and of what they have learned.

Glenda Ferrell, mother of Cadet Rob Ferrell, said she knew that both her sons wanted to serve.

“We come from a long military line,” she said.

One son joined the Army. Rob was initially recruited by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from the Bentonville football team. That was like winning the lottery, his mother said, but when the Air Force called he decided to become a pilot. Rob dreamed big, his mother said and she is proud.

“We are so excited to see that white cap flying in the air,” Ferrell said.

Graduation ceremonies for the academy Class of 2013 will end Wednesday with a graduation ceremony just outside Colorado Springs, Colo.