A Quick 2004-2005 Cessna/ONR/AIAA Design/Build/Fly Competition Wrap-Up

It's early tuesday morning (i.e. 1am) here in lovely Kingsville Texas, and I feel like I've been going non-stop since thursday morning when I boarded a plane out of Corpus Christi bound for the 2004-2005 Cessna/ONR/AIAA Design/Build/Fly Competition (DBF). I imagine all of you who participated feel very similar, between last minute adjustments, traveling, and competiting. TerraBreak.org put another competition behind us, and we're still learning how to gather all the data available at each competition. This year was particularly complicated by our being officials, in addition to being general information recorders. Many thanks go out to Greg Page, Dave Levy, Chris Bovais, and all the other official contest directors. Without them there would be no DBF. Also, it is because of their gracious invitation for us to attend that we don't have a website full of blank pages for this year on TerraBreak.org. It's been comforting to us here at TerraBreak to find out they're just as eager to see the website succeed as we are.

We experienced another first this year at the 2005 competition. Oklahoma State prooved just how much of a powerhouse they are, by winning back-to-back One-Two finishes this year. They are only the second school to win back-to-back titles, and the first school to nab the top spots two years in a row. They've accrued $8,000 dollars over the last two years. Oklahoma State University blew into Webster Field and stamped an immediate impression on this year's competition. Not only were their planes some of the best sorted-out, they had some of the best paint/graphics jobs of the teams out there. I didn't ask, but hopefully they didn't start in January again this year. I have to hand it to Dr. Arena and his students, they've got all the aspects of this competition figured out. We'll have to wait 'till next year to see if anyone can put a stop to their juggernaut. We also have to thank their pilot Dan, he's helped us peer into the DBF world that is OSU by being one of the most active members of our forums.

I am particularly proud of Virginia Tech's showing in this year's competition, its been a long time since a bunch of naive juniors grabbed the reins to revitalize the team. We got 25th that year, but all the effort paid off this year, as they cracked the top 5 for the first time since the inaugural competition. WSU deserves a pretty big pat on the back as well, since they made their way into the money after only two years of competition. Considering the difficulty of the rules this year, that's a particularly inspiring feat. It was a little unfortunate for me to watch UIUC and Cal Poly Pomona struggle as much as they did this year at competition. They were frequent and generous contributors to our forums leading up to the competition and they looked to be strong contenders. Hopefully they're scribbling diligent notes to pass on to next year's teams to learn from.

At about this time in each year's summary we'd like to take time to recognize some of the teams that went out of the ordinary. Mississippi State's tri-plane was absolutely amazing. Not only did they have the largest number of wings (was it 3 or 4?), but despite that handicap, they had the lowest RAC. That just goes to show you what analyzing the RAC formulae can do. I was also impressed with their clamshell payload doors, and the KISS approach to mechanically fastening their payloads. Considering the plane they brought the year before, this aircraft had to be an immense learning experience for their team. West Virginia brought two very unique and distinctly un-conventional aircraft to competition this year. Apparently someone did some research on Zimmermann and his flapjack, because one of the designs was a low AR wing with tip-mounted engines. The engines turned counter-clockwise in order to counteract the wingtip vortex. The aircraft looked good, but could not handle the high winds on Sunday, and met an untimely demise on the unforgiving tarmac. Their second aircraft looked similar to the one that stunned DBF'ers last year. It was a flying wing, with the novel feature of splitting in half along the centerline in order to fit in the box. It actually flew quite successfully, considering it had no vertical control devices. In contrast to that was Utah State's Lady Satan, which had no ailerons. Instead, the aircraft relied on an oversized vertical tail/rudder, and a massive amount of dihedral. The plane flew well, but in its final flight showed how important roll control was in completing the payload deployment mission.

Finally we have to hand it to Purdue and Western Michigan. They suffered very damaging flights Saturday and worked through the night to reappear on the flight line. Western Michigan, despite losing its green receiver pack in the grass, found it and even completed two scoring attempts after rebuilding. That is the kind of spirit TerraBreak.org likes to see in competitors; since we've all been there before ourselves.

Finally, TerraBreak.org would like to leave you with some awards of our own (with some help from David Levy). Since this is an unofficial site, these are unofficial awards. These type of awards have cropped up time to time throughout the competition, depending on the judges' motivation. We particularly like them, and are going to try and revive the tradition to be yearly in scope. All these awards are supposed to be fun, and highlight some of the more interesting designs and moments of the competition. Please take these in the spirit they were intended.


And that about wraps it up for us this year. . .rest up and we'll see ya in Wichita in 2006!

--CwicSeolfer
This file was last modified on May 01, 2006.