MIT Design Build Fly
Creating RC aircraft for the annual AIAA Design/Build/Fly competition.
14/03/2023
And he’s off! 🦫🚀 Today is the MIT 24 Hour Challenge!
Help us reach our goal of 200 donors to unlock a $25,000 gift from the Harvey Family, Mark P’18, Diane P’18, Will ’18, Lauren, and Zach: bit.ly/3M4SNet
Tim is journeying to the moon to mark our progress! Let’s get to the moon and beyond! MIT Alumni Association
14/03/2023
07/03/2023
Come see our plane at the Edgerton Showcase before it flies (as cargo on an A321) to Tucson for the DBF competition🛫
Annual Edgerton Center Teams Showcase Come mingle with the Edgerton Center student-led engineering teams and see their cool projects. Refreshments will be served!
28/02/2023
It's our last push before competition in less than two months! Help us get our team and plane to Tucson, Arizona: https://crowdfund.mit.edu/story/Mit-Dbf
07/02/2023
As we finish up our third flight test of the year, we’d like to shout out General Atomics Aeronautical Systems for sponsoring us! Thank you so much for all of your support in helping us take off.
12/01/2023
Look how happy Tyto Robotics Series 1585 test stand makes us!😁
This test stand is essential for our wind tunnel propulsion testing - telling us the thrust, RPM, current/voltage draw, (and so much more) the Series 1585 enables us to check whether our motor/propellor/ESC combinations are meeting mission requirements. In many cases, these wind tunnel tests are the difference between a successful flight test - or a pretty messy crash.
29/11/2022
This Giving Tuesday, consider donating to MIT Design/Build/Fly! (link at bottom) We’re raising money to help fund our travel and material costs for the 2023 competition in Tucson, Arizona, where we’re building and flying a plane that can be assembled in 5 minutes at the flight line and carry a payload that is more than 30% of its body weight. We’re currently prototyping and iterating on an aircraft to flight test next weekend - our second of the year!
Our team focuses on getting members invaluable hands-on experience in advanced composites manufacturing, aircraft design, and systems engineering all while advancing our technical communication skills. All donations will go directly to buying materials for airplane manufacturing and competition travel. Every single dollar counts to make sure we deliver a high quality aircraft and get as many members to competition as possible! Thank you for supporting our team!
To keep up to date with our progress throughout the year, check out our Instagram .dbf.
Donation link: https://giving.mit.edu/search/node/2744379?fbclid=IwAR0noJSHIQ3Al6qrvsD_PqoD8H-e_uDyUdcubVrtInslfKAmkT2UvAXCRig
26/04/2022
We are proud to say that for the 2022 competition, MIT DBF placed 2nd for Design Report score out of 97 teams and 32nd for the fly off! This is the first in-person competition since 2019 and it took place in Wichita, KS. After a crash on Friday, we rebuilt the fuselage and were able to successfully fly the first mission on Sunday. We are incredibly thankful to all of the people who supported us and made this possible, and we're already looking forward to next year's competition in Tucson, AZ!
11/03/2022
Hello everyone! Today the Edgerton Center who sponsors us is having a 24 hour challenge. If they get 200 donors, a bonus $25k will be donated for Edgerton teams (like MIT DBF!). Any donation helps! https://mit24hourchallenge.mightycause.com/story/Edgerton-Center
Support Edgerton Center on MIT 24-Hour Challenge The Edgerton Center Challenge
30/11/2021
Today is Giving Tuesday, and MIT DBF is raising money to help fund our travel and materials cost for the 2022 competition. This will be our first in-person competition since 2019, and we are currently prototyping and iterating on an aircraft to flight test this weekend! Our team focuses on getting members invaluable hands-on experience in advanced composites manufacturing, aircraft design, and systems engineering all while advancing communicative skills on an engineering team. All donations will go directly to help the team buy materials for manufacturing and travel to the competition in April. Every donation is incredibly valuable to make sure we deliver a high quality aircraft and get as many members as possible to the competition. Thank you so much for all donations!
For the past two weekends, our new members have been building trainer planes. We flew them this past weekend, and had some great flights (and crashes)! Our last new member training is this upcoming weekend, and then we will be welcoming them onto the team!
11/09/2021
Today was our first day back in lab in a long time! We were excited to show members around who haven’t been in lab, and start doing some manufacturing training! Here you can see a small layup tutorial that we did at the end of our training. Looking forward to a new year and new competition!
21/04/2021
We're wrapping up the year with an overview of our design for the AIAA DBF 2020-2021 competition: https://youtu.be/oCEjg0YVDv8
Looking forward to next year already!
10/03/2021
The Edgerton Center 24-Hour Challenge starts at midnight! They need 150 donations of any size for Mark, Diane, Will ’18, Lauren, and Zach Harvey to give $25,000 to support the center.
https://mit24hourchallenge.mightycause.com/story/Edgerton-Center
Support Edgerton Center on MIT 24-Hour Challenge The Edgerton Center Challenge
16/12/2020
We're trying our best to build a plane this Spring so we can compete in the AIAA DBF competition. Consider sending in a donation! Every little bit helps: https://crowdfund.mit.edu/project/23487
Help MIT Design/Build/Fly finish their airplane Help MIT Annual Fund raise $3,500 for the project: Help MIT Design/Build/Fly finish their airplane. Your gift will make a difference!
01/12/2020
Today is Giving Tuesday, and we'd love it if you could help us finish our airplane! Donate here: https://crowdfund.mit.edu/project/23487
Help MIT Design/Build/Fly finish their airplane Help MIT Annual Fund raise $3,500 for the project: Help MIT Design/Build/Fly finish their airplane. Your gift will make a difference!
07/11/2020
You can help support MIT Design/Build/Fly by donating to our crowdfunding campaign before the end of 2020. Our goal of $3,500 will help finance material costs for the season. Anything we raise beyond $3,500 will help cover our travel to Tucson, AZ. We have our fingers crossed that the AIAA competition will be held in person!
https://crowdfund.mit.edu/project/23487
Help MIT Design/Build/Fly finish their airplane Help MIT Annual Fund raise $3,500 for the project: Help MIT Design/Build/Fly finish their airplane. Your gift will make a difference!
05/09/2020
See you on Thursday!
Virtual Clubs and Teams Open House | Edgerton Center When: Thursday, September 10, 2020 - 8:00pm to 9:00pmVirtual Edgerton Center Clubs & Teams Open house Thursday, September 10th at 8:00 P.M. EST How does the Virtual Open House work? Visit this Zoom link for a short presentation about the Edgerton Center, home to a dozen plus student teams. Each...
22/08/2020
27/04/2020
We were super excited to learn we placed 6th place this year based on our Design Document! Congratulations to all the teams who competed and we look forward to flying off next year!
The DBF Organizing Committee is pleased to announce the results of the 2919-20 Design, Build, Fly competition. This has been a tough year for so many and the disappointment of cancelling the DBF fly-off is just a small part of what so many are going through right now. The results this year is based on report scores and is provided here.
Congratulations to USC and all teams who participated. We enjoyed watching the videos this year and look forward to the 2020-21 competition.
19/04/2020
In honor of it being DBF weekend, a few photos of the beautiful prototype of Banner Extending Advertising Unit (B.E.A.U). This aircraft, nicknamed Narwhal, managed to carry out all the mission requirements for this year’s competition. It was also an awesome flight test day! (More photos coming soon)! MIT DBF is still going strong virtually, continuing to learn more about aerospace engineering and preparing for next year!
08/02/2020
Hard at work writing this year’s Design Document! Each year we submit an approximately 60 page document to the Design Build Fly Competition detailing our team, our aircraft, and all that goes into getting our aircraft from concept to competition.
02/01/2020
Today in aviation history, Colonel Willard W. Millikan broke the West-East transcontinental speed record by flying from Los Angeles to New York in 4 hours 40 minutes and 16 seconds!
Picture from American Air Museum in Britain.
Sources and further reading:
https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/2-january-1954/
http://www.americanairmuseum.com/person/224846
Happy New Year from MIT Design Build Fly!
16/11/2019
Puppies and planes!
25/10/2019
Happy birthday to our fearless leader Kate!
24/10/2019
Weekly meeting. Too deep in thought to look at the camera
14/10/2019
Happy Birthday to Talia, our current Mechanisms Subteam Lead (pictured back right)! Here she is with last year's mechanisms members at competition!
10/10/2019
Congrats to our Aerodynamics subteam for their first meeting of the year! They’re hard at work on the preliminary design of the aerodynamic surfaces for our coming proposal.
Videos (show all)
