Our airplane design team researched material to enforce and proceeded to order fiberglass in order to reinforce the plane. As for the progress of the plane, we were only able to remove the pylons of the wing as well as obtain dimensions in order to do the calculations. This is important because we are continuing to derive the stall angle for the plane which requires the Cl_alpha curve for the plane itself. The next step would be to find the center of gravity, CG, through both analytical means and experimentally if needed. Since we can’t do anything until the parts come in, the airplane design team also switched to doing calculations.

The airplane mechanism has been completed using SolidWORKS and has finished its initial design phase. The next week will be dedicated to using the airplane measurements and scaling the figure down to appropriate sizing as well as determining the material and finding pre-existing parts.

The airplane mount has also been completed using SolidWORKS. Dennis researched the material for the mount, and it appears that there doesn’t exist any revolute joints that are large enough for our project so we may resort to 3D printing. Otherwise, we still need to consider the material for the rod-mount for the airplane since a heavy material will rip apart from the plane in the wind tunnel.

Our main challenge so far are really connecting the materials required to pre-existing parts as needed. We want to avoid 3D printing as much as possible, but at the same time have strong but light material since the plane is made of foam.