SAE Aero Advanced Class Team

Union College’s Aero team, the Flying Dutchmen, is an interdisciplinary team of engineers supported by underclassmen.  Five seniors have built a remote controlled plane to compete in the advanced class of the 2017 SAE Aero Design East Competition.  The Flying Dutchmen’s goal is to design and build an aircraft able to lift a static payload of eighteen pounds and to drop a two pound bean bag within sixty feet of a target from an altitude of at least one hundred feet.  The final design is a ten foot long high wing monoplane with a conventional tail and a single engine with a propeller in a puller configuration.  The plane uses a single, internal combustion, reciprocating engine with a displacement of 0.46 cubic inches.  Our aircraft uses two 6-channel, 2.4GHz radio systems to operate control surfaces.  The data acquisition system operates at 900MHz and uses an Arduino Uno coupled with various sensors to determine airspeed, altitude, and to detect payload release.   A first person analog video system is used as a drop sighting device and operates at 5.8GHz. The aircraft is largely constructed from balsa, plywood, carbon fiber, foam, and aluminum.