Overview: You will design, build, and fly a radio-controlled aircraft. It must not weigh more than 1kg.
Team: You will self-select a team of 4-5.
Mission: Your aircraft needs to be able to takeoff from a hand-launch, climb at least 10 meters AGL, pass through two waypoints, and safely land. The airplane must stay within the bottom bowl of the park during its flight. We will use a small GPS, with a radio, to broadcast the airplane’s position to our laptop so we can see its location relative to the waypoints.
Materials: You are welcome to use whatever materials you like in your construction. Since you didn’t have to purchase a textbook you can think of your materials cost as your textbook cost. There will also be a $6 lab fee (per person) to help pay for expendable supplies like adhesive and some tool depreciation in the airplane lab (payable in the ME office). We will restrict motor, propellers, and battery selection to a small list that you can select from. We will stock the following items in the PSC (no guarantees that everything is always in stock, you can also order these supplies online and some are available locally):
We will lend you a receiver that pairs with one of our transmitters, unless you have your own transmitter. For flight days you will borrow the following from us: a remote ID module (required by the FAA unless your plane is under 250g), a GPS, and a GPS radio. For these later items we don’t have enough for every team so you will need to check them out and design your plane such that you can carry them.
Flying: We will provide two pilots for the course.
Deliverables: There will be various deliverables along the way including a design review, a build review, glide memo, etc. Guidelines are provided for each of these on the course schedule, with a relatively low weight in points. They are mostly milestones to make sure you are making continued progress. There main deliverable is the final report.
Safety: