Last update 5/4/99
The Fly-Off for the 1998/99 Cessna/ONR Student Design/Build/Fly competition was held the weekend of April 24-25 at the ONR host site, Webster Field in St. Inigos Maryland. Teams from 14 universities had aircraft in attendance, and several additional teams whose aircraft were incomplete or damaged during testing prior to the competition also attended to enjoy the competition and social activities.
I'd like to extend a special welcome and thank you to the two foreign participants, the Italian team (who were not able to bring and aircraft); and the Canadian Team (Queen's University) who not only were the first to "get on the scoreboard", but who also demonstrated that even a "cargo aircraft" can perform an impressive aerobatics routine.
The 14 teams who brought their aircraft enjoyed nearly perfect (for Maryland) spring weather, which included only a brief downpour at the end of the tech inspection/testing on Friday evening. The rest of the weekend was clear and sunny with moderate to light winds. Ample time was available for teams to make a number of scoring flights; in fact much of Saturday was spent waiting for someone to make a scoring flight, until the Queen's University team decided to launch a campaign and became the first team on the score board. Sunday had a much higher flying activity. The Oklahoma State University Aggie Aquanauts opened the morning, and everyones eyes, by blasting past the best of the Saturday scores with an opening volley at 8:05 in the morning. After getting everyones attention, the remainder of Sunday was spent in hot competition among all the teams. When the dust had settled, the clear and uncontested winner was Utah State University with the Dragon Fly, posting a stunning 104 lb of water carried over the course of 6 sorties, which completely exhausted their supply of payload containers available for the flight. Combined with their written-report score of 90.00 (second best) they had a final net score of 9360.0, and a check for $2500.
Second place and $1500 went to the Oklahoma State University Aggie Aquanauts team with their 8:05 am score of 71.5 lb of water carried in 3 sorties. Combined with a written score of 87.83 gave a net score of 6280.1.
Third place and $1000 went to the University of Southern California H2OT Shark (the only plane to suffer an in-flight fire and still return to competition!) with a maximum payload carried of 49 lb in 5 sorties, combining with a written score of 85.78 for a total score of 4203.
The top three placing teams will be contacted by the Applied Aerodynamics TC to present their designs at the 1999 Applied Aerodynamics Conference in Norfolk Virginia on June 28 - July 1. (If you don't hear from the conference organizers soon be sure and drop me an e-mail). The best written score went to Texas A&M and the "Texas Flash Flood" with a score of 91.00. The Texas A&M "Best Written Report" will be placed on the contest web site for all teams to view.
In order, the final scores for the 98/99 DBF competition are:
| 1 | Utah State University | Dragon Fly | 9360.0 |
| 2 | Oklahoma State Univ | Aggie Aquanauts | 6280.1 |
| 3 | University of Southern California | H2OT Shark | 4203.0 |
| 4 | Georgia Tech. | Magic Carpet | 3901.6 |
| 5 | Texas A&M University | Texas Flash Flood | 3867.5 |
| 6 | University of New Mexico | Lobonautics | 2808.5 |
| 7 | Cal Poly SLO | Bahama Mama | 1714.5 |
| 8 | Queen's University | 1553.9 | |
| 9 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | RPP-1 | 1521.2 |
Aircraft flying but not completing a full scoring lap placed next with
| 10 | Cleveland State University | 85.5 | |
| 11 | Oklahoma State University | Hercules | 80.5 |
| 12 | Syracuse University | Manta UAV | 73.0 |
| 13 | E. Stroudsburg University | Underdog/Javelin | 59.5 |
Teams not flying but submitting a written report included
| 14 | Cal Poly SLO | Albatross | 82.2 |
| 15 | Miami University, Ohio | MUX-1 | 73.7 |
| 16 | USMA West Point | The Blue Falcon | 69.8 |
| 17 | University Delgi Studi La Sapienza | 63.3 | |
| 18 | University of Texas, Austin | Longhorn Loadstar | 62.9 |
| 19 | Illinois Inst. of Tech. | Hawk | 61.0 |
| 20 | Washington State University | Coug-Bird | 60.9 |
| 21 | Michigan State University | Spartan Bomber | 56.6 |
| 22 | West Virginia University | Boxcar | 54.3 |
| 23 | University of Central Florida | UCF Electric Air | 52.3 |
| 24 | University of Arizona | RC99 UAV | 51.1 |
| 25 | Tuskegee University | Loadmaster | 41.1 |
| 26 | Virgina Polytech | Dragonfly | 39.0 |
Detailed scoring for the written reports, all sorties flown, and final results are also contained in the Adobe Acrobat files below.
The contest would not have been the resounding success it was without the help of many people too numerous to list here. I do want to especially thank Cessna Aircraft Company and the Office of Naval Research for their financial support and the AIAA Foundation and the Academy of Model Aeronautics for their sponsorship. Special thanks go to our hosts at the Patuxent Naval Air Station, Webster Field: CAPT Paul Roberts, CO NAS Patuxent River, for the use of Webster Field; CDR Herb Yee, Officer-In-Charge VC-6 for providing access to their hanger and supplying food for the hungry participants; Len Parrish, Pam Bean, and Peg Tysiak, host coordinators for the event; and the entire Webster field security and support staff.
I'd like to once more congratulate all of this years
participants and thank you for making this another successful and
fun competition. Draft rules for the 1999/00 DBF competition should
be up on the contest web site in about a month, so keep checking
in. All of the DBF judges and sponsors thank you for your participation
and look forward to seeing you again next year.
Greg Page
gregory.s.page@nrl.navy.mil