Alfred University’s Aero Saxons take part in Design/Build/Fly competition

group of students holding two banners — Members of the Aero Saxons, Alfred University’s Design/Build/Fly student club, shown above are, from left: Dana Macalle, Nicholas Goetze, Kathryn Geiger, Lucas Young (team lead), Alessandro Lagos Canales, and Bradley Smith.

A team of students from Alfred University recently traveled to Wichita, KS, to participate in a competition to design, fabricate, and demonstrate the flight capabilities of a radio-controlled aircraft.

The students, members of Aero Saxons, the University’s Design/Build/Fly (DBF) Club, took part in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) 28^th Annual DBF Competition, held April 18-21. The 13 students who participated are engineering majors who were advised in the competition by Seong-Jin Lee, associate professor of mechanical engineering.

Aero Saxons, one of 107 teams from around the world entered, placed 68^th in the competition, which required teams to design and build a radio-controlled aircraft and show that it meets the DBF competition’s required missions.

The Alfred DBF team’s participation was sponsored by Autodesk, a provider of software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries, Alfred University’s Inamori School of Engineering, and APEX, the University’s applied and experiential learning program.