AIAA Design Build Fly Competition

The AIAA Design Build Fly competition pushes students to design a unique remote control aircraft with different design constraints each year. The 2017-2018 competition revolves around designing an aircraft with the intention of it being a dual purpose regional and business aircraft.

The competition itself consists of three parts:

1. An initial design proposal

2. A design report

3. The contest fly-off​

​

Initial Design Proposal

In order to be considered for the competition, each school seeking to compete submits an initial design proposal. The initial design proposal lays out a detailed plan of how your team plans to approach this problem. Certain things to keep in mind is the restrictions set each year regarding the design and the format specifications for the report.

Design Report

The design report is a detailed layout of the team's design, manufacturing, and testing. This report is very extensive and needs to contain precise CAD drawings and models of the design. The report should also contain all calculations used to create your design and any testing data collected needs to be recorded in illustrated. 

​

Contest Fly-off

The fly off is where teams test their built remote control aircraft. The fly off is composed of 3 flight missions and 1 ground mission. Each mission has a time restriction and teams are scored on a numerically scale depending on how well the mission objective was achieved. 

​

For more information please check out the AIAA-DBF website at http://www.aiaadbf.org/