Structures Progress (Fall 09)

The Structure Group has had the interesting position this fall of figuring out how to build the lightest, strongest, and quickly constructed, on a budget aircraft as possible.
Evaluation of previous winning aircraft showed composite fuselages to be key; especially with the high volume needs of the 10 softballs. A fiberglass-balsa composite has been found to be ideal. Since the final aircraft was not designed yet, the group elected to build replacement fuselages for the smaller duraplanes.

After the mold was made, we began laying up different fuselages.

The team uses a non-autoclave, vacuum bagging technique to layup the composites. Thanks to Northrop-Grumman for their gifts to help with our use of non-autoclave composites.