SAE Collegiate Design Series: Aero Design®
2009 SAE Aero Design East - Success in the Air!
ACWORTH, Ga., April 9, 2009
The SAE Aero Design East competition held April 3-5, 2009 in Kennesaw, Georgia lived up to its high-quality, high-excitement tradition. Completing over 300 individual flights and 8 rounds of flight competitions, the almost perfect weather was the exclamation point to the competition’s three-day event.
Friday’s events held at the Kennesaw State University Continuing Education Center included safety and technical inspection of 57 team planes. It also included oral presentations by the teams, as if they were trying to convince a government customer to purchase their aircraft design instead of any other competitor’s design. That means the teams gave detailed explanations of how they arrived at the conclusion that their design is the best. The day ended with a meeting of the next two days activities and guidelines. Eight countries were represented; along with the United States and Canada, teams from Poland, Mexico, Venezuela, Germany, Brazil and India all participated in the competition.
Over 200 volunteers from Lockheed Martin, the Cobb County Radio Modeler’s Club, Gulfstream, NASA and other organizations assisted our lead organizer, Lonnie Dong, System Engineer Stf, Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Company. Lonnie has been organizing these events for a number of years now and he seems to outdo himself every year in the quality of this competition. This year, he arranged for a Thursday afternoon tour of the C130 Assembly Line and F-22 Flight Simulator / Demonstrator ride for 50 participants. Hearty congratulations to him and all the volunteers.
The SAE Collegiate Design Series staff would like to thank Lonnie and all the volunteers, sponsors and teams who helped make this event the success that it was. Thank you. These are two simple words that, when used together, have more impact and meaning than words far more eloquent. Unfortunately, these also are two words not said often enough. So, to you, the volunteers of the 2009 SAE Aero Design East competition, we say “thank you”.
A summary of the top finishers are below:
Regular Class Overall / Elliott Green Award:
1st #037 – Escola Politecnica Universidade de São Paulo
2nd #029 – Federal Universidade de Minas Gerais
3rd #002 – University of Cincinnati
Open Class Overall:
1st #218 – Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos – USP
2nd #219 – Warsaw University of Technology
3rd #217 – Missouri University of Science & Technology
Micro Class Overall:
1st #319 – University of Minnesota
2nd #317 – Ryerson University
3rd #315 – University of Puerto Rico
Other Interesting Stats:
Class Attempts Successful %
Regular 222 102 45.95%
Open 38 15 39.47%
Micro 44 12 27.27%
Total 304 129 42.43%
As an added benefit, Raymond Cervantes was also in attendance again to provide the live webcast on www.teamrcpilot.com. Hundreds of friends and family from around the world were able to join the event virtually through the webcast.
For a complete list of all the winners and specialty awards, please refer to: http://students.sae.org/competitions/aerodesign/results/
