Five medals - two silver and three bronze - were won by students of Wrocław University of Science and Technology at the aviation constructors’ competition SAE Aero Design East 2019, which took place last weekend at Fort Worth Airport in Texas. More than 80 teams from all over the world took part in the challenge

SAE Aero Design tournaments have been organised for 30 years. The participants’ task is to construct on their own unmanned aeroplanes meeting specific regulatory standards. The machines must lift as much weight as possible while weighing as little as possible.

Our students from the JetStream team entered their planes to the Advanced and Mikro classes. The machines they’d built featured wingspans of 3.65 m and 1 m respectively.

This year's task in the Advanced class was to carry out a mission simulating the colonisation of Mars. Its first part consisted in ascending to a height of about 30 m and dropping habitats in the shape of several dozen balls made of foam and more than a dozen half-litre bottles of water onto a designated target. In the subsequent stage, the aim was to drop three fully autonomous gliders attached to a mother-plane.

In the Micro category, the challenge involved carrying as much weight as possible on an aircraft weighing as little as possible as well as assembling the machine in the shortest possible time.

- It wasn’t easy. We started the challenge on Friday, and at the beginning, our team had to undergo technical inspections, deliver aircraft presentations and, in the case of Micro class, assemble the aircraft against the clock. On Saturday morning, we our flights began. Unfortunately, the weather showed its nasty face on that day. The morning storm and the very strong side wind made many teams touch the ground too quickly. What’s more, we had problems with stable flight, but thanks to our pilot’s great skills, all flights in the Advanced class got a pass. As for the Micro class, three out of four flights were successful - said Rafał Kowalczyk from the JetStream team.

Fortunately, the conditions were much better on the second day of the competition. Light wind, parallel to the direction of the runway, allowed stable flights. - In the Micro class, we passed both flights with maximum load. In the Advanced class, we dropped all the habitats and water precisely onto the destination in our two flights. The gliders caused us problems because they collided with each other during the first flight. In the break between the flights, our electronics specialists reprogrammed the mission, causing the glider to land in a designated area in the last round - explained Rafał Kowalczyk.

Eventually, our students did an excellent job of winning second place in the Advanced Class in the general classification and second place for flights. In the Micro class, they won third place in the general classification, third place for the technical report, and another third place for successful flights and the flight to cargo weight ratio.

The JetStream team has been participating in SAE Aero Design for over ten years, supported by the university and sponsors and, since 2012, also by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. In total, the club has already won twenty-five medals.