2024-2025 Team Leadership

	Mike York Electrical Engineering ’25 Captain and Wings Team Lead Contact: yorkm@union.edu
	Maia Chapin Mechanical Engineering ’26 President and Tail Team Lead Contact: chapinm@union.edu
	Spencer Shaffer Computer Science ’27 Vice-President and Fuselage Team Lead Contact: shaffers@union.edu
	Michael Kahn Electrical Engineering ’25 Communications Chair Contact: thorntona@union.edu
	Zaid Fafouri Electrical Engineering ’26 Electronics Team Lead Contact: fafouriz@union.edu
	Maeve Baksa Mechanical Engineering ’26 Payload Team Lead Contact: baksam@union.edu
	Professor Takashi Buma Associate Professor & Associate Chair of ECBE Faculty Advisor Contact: bumat@union.edu

SAE Aero Team: 2025 Competition

Abstract

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) is a professional organization that hosts student design competitions. To score well, Micro Class RC Aero planes must take off quickly, carry 2L of dynamic payload, and minimize both wingspan and plane weight. Union College’s 2025 plane built on past innovations and optimizations to improve performance and reliability. We greatly improved our design, analytical capacity, and testing ability for future planes. At competition, our planning and perseverance resulted in Union’s best flight performance in six years.

Aircraft Overview

Union’s 2025 plane is a conventional-style untapered wing with a cruciform tail and tricycle landing gear. It is made of a central carbon fiber spine with a balsa and birch box-tube fuselage, carbon shafts, and additively manufactured mounts. The plane is finished in Ultracote for drag reduction.

Figure 1: 3D render of 2025 competition plane.

Figure 2: High-level drawing of 2025 competition plane.

Modular Design Innovations

For cross-country transit and rapid repair, our plane can be broken down into small segments. Each compartment is modular and reparable in parallel, allowing us to test design configurations and quickly recover from crashes. Our competition strategy was widely commended in California.

Figure 3: Close-up of plane rear, showing box tube construction and module separation slits.

Additive Payload Manufacturing

To carry water without sloshing instability, the payload container was printed from a foaming polymer, LW-PLA as a single body with baffle plates. The manufacturing of this part in one piece was made possible by utilizing a  fused deposition modeling machine with  gantry at 45 degrees in order to create a hollow internal volume without using internal support materials.

Figure 4: Cross-section of 2L payload container with single baffle plate. Printed as one piece, it weighed 95g empty vs. the 335g with standard non-foaming polymer.

Testing and Analysis

The team investigated numerical fluid simulations to find lift and drag effects across on the fuselage. We also constructed a wing testing rig to measure lift and drag. These processes allow us to quickly verify and iterate on our designs, and gave us valuable skills to improve our analysis for future planes.

Figure 5: Ansys flow velocity simulation.

Figure 6: Detail of wing testing rig.

Competition Performance

Competition was held in Van Nuys, California, in April 2025. We were in the minority of teams that completed a successful flight in difficult crosswind conditions. The team made valuable industrial and scholastic connections, obtained several new sponsors, and learned an incredible amount from this experience.

About the competition: Union Aero Team Shines at SAE Aero West 2025

Conclusions and Future Work

This year presented many challenges for the Union Aero team, but through determination and collaboration, we successfully met our core goals: fostering hands-on peer mentorship, maintaining sustainable technical excellence, and serving as positive ambassadors for Union Engineering. Before the end of term, we will host a mock competition showcasing first-year student planes, build on past research to test composite fuselage structures and flying wing designs, and continue to refine our manufacturing, design, and leadership processes. Our well-planned and successful competition was the capstone of months of hard work and we remain committed to continuous improvement.

Learn how to support us for the 2026 Competition.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank many people for their invaluable support this year: Professor Takashi Buma, Dean Ashok Ramasubramanian, Cole Belmont, Professor Jennifer Currey, Viola Li, Veronica Beswick, Jocelyn Rockower, Rob Harlan, Paul Tompkins, Katie Davin, Emily Rocha, and Professor Heather Watson. We are also thankful for our external sponsors: Union ECBE Departement, Trelleborg, Rob Langone, Bob Smith Industries, Ansys, Dassault Systems, Innov8ive Designs, Slyfox Systems, and our gracious alumni donors. 

Learn how to support us for the 2026 Competition.

Learn more about our Sponsors.

Have questions or want to learn more? Contact us at aeroclub@union.edu.