Balsa Aircraft Challenge

1) Provide a brief description of the activity. Who did you work with? What did you build? What challenges did you overcome to successfully craft your aircraft?

The group I worked with was Preston Segura, David Bodkin, and myself. It originally was David and I, however Preston did not have a partner, so we took him under our WING. What we built was a Balsa Airplane, however we made many adjustments to the plan. We excluded a lot of "necessary pieces" that ended up not being needed, so it was for the better. The challenges we overcame successfully to craft our aircraft were that we finished out Airplane. We were extremely behind the class, and we managed to finish with a plane that had an extremely nice flight. We also found a way to work together as a team, doing different tasks at one time, rather than the same task together.

2) Post a photo of your glider under construction.

3) Post a photo of your finished design.

4) Describe how you tested your aircraft and tuned its flight characteristics.

What we did to test our aircraft was start with a finished plane, and then take off parts and see how it affected the flight pattern. It worked quite well because we had some time to apply missing pieces, or pieces we took off during the test flight.

5) Describe how well your aircraft flew in our competition. Did you win any events (furthest distance, longest time aloft)? Were you competitive in our best decorated flier competition?

I think we did win the furthest distance event, and our plane flew quite well, excluding the first trial in which our plane completely failed. We were not in the best decorated flier competition because ours was not really following a specific design.

6) Pick three steps from the PLTW 12 step design process and describe how your team worked through these during the course of this experience.

a.) Step 2. - Brainstorm :: We brainstormed ways to modify the plane so it would look more original, and still be capable of flying a long distance.
b.) Step 9. - Test and Evaluate :: We took our plane outside and took several practice flights. We would remove parts and see how it affected the flight, and took note of changes we needed.
c.) Step 10. - Refine the Design :: After step 9, we put our changes into effect, and it all turned out for the better. Our plane flew quite well, and it was missing many pieces on purpose.