During the last three days of the week, students worked on new gliders and prepared for their next big project, a motorized remote control aircraft.

Learning New Building Techniques

Students were taught how to use heated wires to cut foam and also learned how to use a sander. These skills allow the teams to build their aircraft with their own airfoil design, for the final two projects.

Fly Day at the RC Field

The week ended with a fly day. The mentors invited the students to the San Fernando Valley RC flyers field (Apollo XI) in which students would be able to familiarize themselves with the controls of the aircraft they would be building. Throughout the day many aircraft were flown, and the one seen in the video above was created by the students of UCLA.

We had a really good time playing and watching others fly their model planes!

More about my UCLA E96A experience:

• UCLA E96A Plane Engineering: The Start of an Adventure
• UCLA E96A Week One Recap – Gliders, Part One
• UCLA E96A Week One Recap – Gliders, Part Two
• UCLA E96A Week Two Recap – Aerodynamics
• UCLA E96A Week Three Recap – The Final Test
• UCLA E96A Week Three Recap – Building The Final Plane

Flight testing showed measurable differences between our glider iterations, confirming that small changes in wing geometry directly affect glide distance and stability.