Do You Even Lift is a team of senior engineer students at Oklahoma Christian University, and the group is in the process of designing an airplane for The Society of Automotive Engineers Aero Competition taking place in March 2016.
Senior engineering student Hayley Weaver is the team lead, making for a total of nine students on the team. These students are divided into five sub-teams.
Each sub team has a specific job. Drew Bellcock and Brandon Ramsey work on wings, Ian Lessly works on the main body — the fuselage, Andrew Zabloudil and Chuck Bremer work on the tail, Ryan Lutterloh works with landing gear, and Sean Anderson and Gigi Gonzalez work in controls and propulsion.
“As engineer students, you start system one in the spring of your junior year,” Weaver said. “We, as a team, started in January 2015. Our competition is in March 2016. We are in system two now, system three will be in the spring.”
As a team, they meet every week to prepare for the competition. Though they are only required to spend nine hours in the lab, Weaver said most team members end up spending about 20 hours on the plane.
“It’s our part-time job right now,” Weaver said. “It’s a lot of work, but we enjoy it.”
The faculty sponsor for the group is Bradley Buxton, a professor for mechanical engineering.
“This is a great team of engineers.” Buxton said. “These seniors have all the talent necessary to design and build an RC airplane.”
According to Buxton, this is not the only reason that he sponsors the group.
“I’m an aviation nut,” Buxton said. “I’ve loved airplanes from childhood, and my dad was a private pilot. So, I grew up flying with him, going to airshows and building model airplanes. I really enjoy model aviation, and the SAE Aero Competition is a great design experience for our engineering students. It’s a privilege to mentor them.”
The group is preparing for the system three mark, which is the upcoming competition. The competition is March 2016 and will be held in Fort Worth, Texas.
“We will do an oral presentation in front of judges,” Weaver said. “We will also turn in our written report we’ve been working on. We will do up to six flights with our aircrafts that we build.”
As the group prepares for the competition, they are seeking a pilot to remotely control their airplanes.
“We are looking for somebody who has competition experiences,” Weaver said. “The person can be any student on Oklahoma Christian’s Campus or outside of campus.”
Weaver said more advanced skills for the RC pilot would be preferred.
“Right now I am the pilot,” Buxton said. “And I really enjoy it. I’ll continue to fly and have a blast doing it, but at some point the challenge may require more advanced skills, which is what we’re looking for.”
Do You Even Lift is working toward the SAE Aero Competition.
“I encourage Do You Even Lift to keep up the hard work and cooperation.” Buxton said. “We’re trying to have their new airplane in the air before the end of October. So they’ll have to make tough decisions with less-than-perfect information, which is exactly what engineers get paid to do. I’m very excited to be part of their adventure in flying.”
SAE Aero Competition will be on March 11-13, 2016. The score will be added up with oral presentation, written report and flying part. The highest score will win the competition.
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