{"497521":{"#nid":"497521","#data":{"type":"news","title":"More Gold, More Lessons from 2015 AIAA Design Build Fly Competition","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EBuzz Killington has a lot to be proud of.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe three-pound, balsa wood-and-shrink-wrap, remote-controlled plane -- built by students in the GT-AE Design Competition Class -- beat out 81 other school teams to take home third place in the 2015 AIAA Design Build Fly competition, held in Tuscon, AZ, April 10-12.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnd the official written report on Buzz Killington\u0027s design concept took home the top honor, earning 98.5 out of 100 possible points.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut bragging rights are not the only thing that GT-AE students took home from their road trip to Tuscon. In each of Buzz\u0027s three competition flights, the students were able to observe, analyze, and critique months of engineering that went into building the plane.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe first test challenged Buzz to fly as far as possible in four minutes. Here, as always, weight was the enemy. While the balsa wood fuselage was feather-like, the engine was another matter.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022We were required to use a nickel hydride battery, which is really heavy and not very efficient,\u0022 said team designer David Gitan. \u0022But we were consistently able to get it up to 60 miles-per-hour in our tests, which was pretty good.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe second challenge required a 60-foot takeoff while carrying a five-pound block of wood that was placed in the fuselage.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut it was the third challenge -- to carry and dispense as many whiffle balls as possible - that really got the team revved up. It was worth 50 percent of the total points.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo keep the weight down, the Buzz Killington designers decided to link the ball release mechanism to the flight controls. When the plane undertook certain maneuvers, the whiffle balls would automatically deploy.But it was the third challenge -- to carry and dispense as many whiffle balls as possible - that really got the team revved up. It was worth 50 percent of the total points.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe inherent risk with this weight-saving design was that the ball release mechanism could interfere with the flight controls, thereby jeopardizing the flight itself.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe team tested this component mercilessly before bringing Buzz Killington to the AIAA competition. After ironing out one small flaw, they found it worked consistently on all of its trial runs. It did the same in Tuscon.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022Normally we have obstacles to overcome at the competition that never showed up during flight testing, but every time our team was called we flew the mission flawlessly,\u0022 said research engineer Carl Johnson, who mentored the class along with fellow RE David Moroniti and grad student Tom Neuman. \u0022I\u2019m really proud of the team and what we accomplished this year.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Buzz Killington, built by students in the GT-AE Design Competition Class, beat out 81 other school teams to take home third place in the 2015 AIAA Design Build Fly Competition."}],"uid":"30502","created_gmt":"2016-02-09 15:58:35","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:20:38","author":"Sapna Mistry","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-04-17T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-04-17T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"497531":{"id":"497531","type":"image","title":"More Gold, More Lessons from 2015 AIAA Design Build Fly Competition","body":null,"created":"1455120000","gmt_created":"2016-02-10 16:00:00","changed":"1475895256","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:54:16","alt":"More Gold, More Lessons from 2015 AIAA Design Build Fly Competition","file":{"fid":"204635","name":"04-17aiaa_dbfteam.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/04-17aiaa_dbfteam_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/04-17aiaa_dbfteam_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":85645,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/04-17aiaa_dbfteam_0.jpg?itok=HcMsYRLx"}}},"media_ids":["497531"],"groups":[{"id":"1239","name":"School of Aerospace Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"136","name":"Aerospace"},{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"},{"id":"145","name":"Engineering"}],"keywords":[{"id":"2576","name":"AIAA"},{"id":"171672","name":"Balsa Wood"},{"id":"169902","name":"Design Build Fly Competition"},{"id":"126111","name":"GT-AE"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":["kathleen.moore@ae.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}