The AAVG team kicked off S&T's 2009 design competition season today at the SAE Aero East Competition at Marietta, Georgia. Chief Engineer Michael Mueller called to say that Sky Miner, the team's 2009 airplane design, (pardon the pun) flew through tech inspection by 10:00 a.m. this morning, the first open class plane to do so. The craft had 100% compliance with the judging rules, and only needed to cushion their battery pack to comply with local flying club requirements.
Mike reported that teams from all over the country are entered in the event, as well as teams from Poland, Canada, and the always impressive Brazilians. We haven't confirmed whether our friends from Venezuela are there, but we hope so. St Louis University is on hand and they always bring competitive birds to SAE Aero events. Our Miners compete in the Open Class, of which there are nine teams registered; not sure how many other teams are entered in the regular classes. Open Class is the big dogs of the airstrip, by the way.
Team spokesman Mike Crance sent us a end-of-day note that sounds very promising for the Miners who are working to recover from particularly hard landings (think crashes) in '07 and '08, and it sounds like there's plenty of room for optimism this year.
Mike says "we passed tech inspection early in the day which means that we are ok to fly tomorrow (Saturday). We also gave our technical presentation to the Lockheed-Martin panel of judges. Mike Mueller did a great job with the presentation and the team ended up with the second-ranked oral presentation score. We also discovered our design report was ranked 3rd, these two scores put us in second place overall behind the Brazilians".
He continues "we have already seen aircraft carnage today and there was no flying. The Open Class team that presented before us walked out of the room with their plane in pieces...some judging session. We also took a little field trip to the flying field today to check it out and do some testing of how the plane handles in grass--which is pretty much beautifully.
For tomorrow, we look forward to competing with a very strong Brazilian team and showing the world what Missouri S&T has".
Tomorrow evening we hope to report that the Miners have vaulted into the flying lead, and upset the skilled Brazilians. For a look at the team and plane, scroll down a few stories and see photos and stories from the test flight just two weeks ago.
P.S. You might be interested to know that the judges' criteria for a successful landing says that if no parts fall off by the time the airplane comes to a stop, you're good! Your pilot can pancake the bird in a crash landing and destroy the plane, but if all the myriad of pieces remain attached then you have a valid flight.
For the record, this unidentified team did not get credit for a successful landing last year.......
But if memory recalls, this one did.
Go figure!
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