To help navigate the unexpected challenges of working on a project remotely, the team leaned into its core values for motivation and direction.
“One of our core values is excellence, and another is initiative, so those two combined meant that we had a team committed to putting in the time it took to overcome virtual barriers, and over time, we learned to adapt,” said John Blausen ’21, team chief engineer and recent graduate from the mechanical engineering department.
Texas A&M’s team, Farmers Flight, worked together entirely over Zoom for the first few months, leveraging computer-aided design and simulations in the absence of a physical workspace and wind tunnels for testing. Despite the added learning curve, they stayed on track with their project.
“We ended up designing a whole prototype over the summer, and we designed it all over Zoom,” Rogers said. “It was kind of a risk designing a plane that early, but we saw it was beneficial as a learning process for new members on the team to go through a design from start to finish, and it gave us time to focus on improving the design and build process in the fall.”
With the support of advisors, Farmers Flight was able to safely begin building and testing their plane. The team’s advisors, associate professor of practice Brad Worsham and Scott McHarg, both from the aerospace engineering department, committed their weekends and hours after work to help the students test their design and learn from failed flights.
“It’s really unique and a benefit to our team that we have the support from our advisors for every single flight,” Curnutt said. “Scott McHarg has been flying RC planes for years, so he gives advice from a very practical perspective, and Brad Worsham can translate that using theory.”
This year, Farmers Flight veered from their previous year’s winning monoplane design and instead explored a biplane design. Opting for a new approach pushed the team, but it paid off. They surpassed their flight performance score from last year and performed well enough on day one of the competition to seal their win.
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July 26, 2021 at 10:26PM
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World Champion: Texas A&M Wins International Aero Design Competition - Texas A&M Today - Texas A&M University Today
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