End of the Year and Summer

[Nihar Gandhi]

Hello everyone,

I would like to thank everyone who participated in Design/Build/Fly this year. While we are always focused on being competitive at the annual contest, the underlying goal of our club is to provide a hands-on educational opportunity to engineering students. While we faced some insurmountable challenges this year with regards to the DBF Committee, I firmly believe that we achieved our main goal. The report we produced this year matched in quality the top scoring reports from every DBF competition to date. While there were issues with the aircraft discovered in flight testing, had there been a competition we are confident these would have been remedied at the expense of a small weight penalty.

We are confident that the team will come back even stronger in the future. Professor Selig will be teaching the aircraft senior design course AE 442/443 next year, so expect much more involvement from him. Prof. Selig has many years of R/C experience, and formerly served on the DBF Rules Committee. He has a vast knowledge of what needs to be done to be successful with DBF. Additionally, there will be several returning members including Curtis Woodruff, who will help the team get going early next year.

Finally, if you plan on staying in Urbana-Champaign this summer and would like to work in the shop on aircraft-related projects, send me your Name, netid, and UIN. I will forward that information to Pete Hetman, the ESPL coordinator. Finally, if you are interested in an executive position next year, we will be giving priority to members with experience rather than new seniors. The President and Treasurer positions are open, and if you are interested please email me directly (nih...@gmail.com).

Thanks for a great year, and good luck with finals!

Nihar Gandhi
Team Lead, Treasurer
DBF 2011-2012