Yes it may have been edited by a professional editor however the basic idea is hopefully the same but we really have no context of how much and what editing was done. Maybe I'm naive but is it not the content that we are looking for and not the presentation? Don't get me wrong presentation should account for some of the grade, however on one end you have a good well constructed argument or idea that is convoluted and confusing for the reader (I guess you could say much like some of my writing) and on the other you have a crappy idea or argument that is in the perfect editing style. As well, I've taken my papers into the university's writing centre many times for review. The university offers this service, is that cheating then? I doubt that a professional editor (outside specific industries) would have any clue to things in fields such as Microbiology, Biochemistry, Theoretical Physics, or even Engineering usually they're looking to improve their clients writing so that the idea can be effectively communicated not to do the work for them.

If they encoded the resulting equation with base64 would that have made it a bit more challenging? I doubt many people would make it past that step, even I would find a message encoded in base64 meaningless.

From what I understand, it's not actually doing wrong that will get you disbarred (yes if you kill someone you'll be disbarred) but rather the appearance of doing wrong that may put the profession into bad light (ie. unethical things that put the professions integrity into question). I have not evidence to substantiate this since it was a college (Law) prof who told the class this but he was a practicing lawyer for a number of years before going back to teaching.

Keep the whole thing simple, the next person who comes in will thank you for it. Don't introduce any weird convoluted things into the system and make sure to make it so that the whole system is modular, easily upgradeable, and when the time comes and they need to expand that it's expansion friendly.

Even if you do it at a Fixed Base Operator you still get checked out by customs if flying internationally. Muskoka Airport (CYQA) is a port of entry for international flights and private planes that land still get checked out by Customs. Otherwise if you wanted to sneak in drugs into a country you'd be pretty much freely able to do it via FBO's and chartered private jets.