Construction of the competition plane is well underway! The VersaLASER has been our workhorse for this build. The ribs and fuselage sections were created directly from drawings “printed” to this laser cutter. These cuts are extremely precise; we could cut parts out manually, but there would be slight differences between each due to human error.

The fuselage skeleton is complete, along with the tail. Both were assembled this weekend! All wing ribs have been cut out and are awaiting assembly. The wings will be held together mainly by carbon fiber strips, which have been marked for cutting. Unfortunately, machine shop’s band saw is down for maintenance (a rare event!) so the wings will have to wait until later in the week.

As always, if you are interested in building airplanes and airplane-building-related activities, stop by our weekly meetings on Mondays at 9 PM in 233 Mudd. Also head to the machine shop on the second floor of Mudd on Friday afternoons; we spend most of our build time there.