History

For the past seven years the Union College Aero Team has been competing in the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Aero Design Competition. In the Past the team has competed against schools like Virginia Tech, University of Michigan, Warsaw University of Technology (Poland), and Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brazil) all which have an immense aerospace program sponsored by well- known aerospace firms such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

This year the SAE Aero Design team is going to compete in the “Regular Class” competition, which is going to take place in Van Nuys, CA this upcoming April. The “Regular Class” competition encompasses the design and production of a large-scale remote controlled aircraft that must meet predetermined power and size constraints. The overall objective of the competition is to design and build an aircraft that is able to carry the maximum amount of weight  within a takeoff runway of two hundred feet.

The SAE Aero Design Competition is intended to provide undergraduate engineering students from different disciplines with an exceptional and stimulating engineering challenge (SAE Aero Design East and West Rules). The competition is heavily geared towards pushing students beyond the limits of textbooks and laboratories by designing, building, and testing the performance of an actual airplane. The competition is composed of three categories: the technical report, technical oral presentation, and the competition performance. This year the Union College Aero Team will serve as the transition year as we will be setting the foundation for future teams to compete in the Advance Class competition.