CAFplanekid
Apr 28, 2007, 03:38 PM
The AIAA Design/Build/Fly competition was last weekend in Tucson, Arizona, sponsored by Raytheon. I am a sophomore on the Purdue team, and we took third this year, after MIT and the OSU Orange team.
Scoring was based primarily on wing span and empty weight, your flight score being divided by each, so this lead to some very interesting designs. Many of the planes were biplanes, as well as a few canards, and a few other lifting bodies. The two flight missions were to carry a 3 pound 'air sampler' payload, and a 5 pound 'camera ball' payload for 4 minutes. We designed a 24" lifting body with two AXI 2820/08s spinning counter-rotating props.
We completed the air sampler mission successfully (the first successful flight of the competition), but our batteries could not quite keep the 5 pound payload in the air for the needed 4 minutes, leading to three consecutive crashes and two extensive repairs at the competition.
We experimented with a number of different designs and configurations before we got our stability figured out on the final design. I believe our competition aircraft was # 10 or 11!
Here are a few videos, the first is of our test flights, the second of the competition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp4W_dfaVPk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuG6ZZHGZOQ
Scoring was based primarily on wing span and empty weight, your flight score being divided by each, so this lead to some very interesting designs. Many of the planes were biplanes, as well as a few canards, and a few other lifting bodies. The two flight missions were to carry a 3 pound 'air sampler' payload, and a 5 pound 'camera ball' payload for 4 minutes. We designed a 24" lifting body with two AXI 2820/08s spinning counter-rotating props.
We completed the air sampler mission successfully (the first successful flight of the competition), but our batteries could not quite keep the 5 pound payload in the air for the needed 4 minutes, leading to three consecutive crashes and two extensive repairs at the competition.
We experimented with a number of different designs and configurations before we got our stability figured out on the final design. I believe our competition aircraft was # 10 or 11!
Here are a few videos, the first is of our test flights, the second of the competition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp4W_dfaVPk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuG6ZZHGZOQ