Buckeye Vertical places third at Vertical Flight Society’s inaugural Design Build-Vertical Flight student competition

MAE’s new unmanned aircraft club, Buckeye Vertical, placed third at its very first competition, the Vertical Flight Society’s inaugural Design Build-Vertical Flight student competition.

The objective was to design and build an electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. Buckeye Vertical’s design was a front tilt rotor quadcopter with a fixed-wing.

 “As a first year team, it’s truly a great experience to receive an award for our first competition to recognize all the hard work put in by our team members this past year,” Michael Valcarcel, co-founder and vice president of Buckeye Vertical said.  “But at the same time, it’s very motivating for our team to keep improving to place higher in next year’s competition.”

The competition took place in three rounds: a preliminary design report in December, a final technical report in March, and a final virtual presentation in April. During the live presentations to the judges, the team had 15 minutes to present to the judges our aircraft design and concept, and then had 25-30 minutes for a Q&A session with the judges.

After all teams presented, the judges took into consideration all teams preliminary design report, final technical report, and live presentation in the final scoring and judging. The Vertical Flight Society announced the winners in a press release on May 27.

Buckeye Vertical tied for second place in the preliminary design report round and were awarded $500. After the judging was completed, the team placed third overall and were awarded an additional $500.

The team competed against six other schools from across the US and Canada: University of Michigan, University of Maryland, McGill University, Oregon State University, Pennsylvania State University, and Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology.

Buckeye Vertical plans on competing again next year in the Vertical Flight Society’s Design Build-Vertical Flight competition, and are looking forward to more in-person engagement in future competitions.

The club’s future goals center around their continued effort to provide students a platform to engage with and learn more about Advanced Air Mobility, Unmanned Aircraft Systems, air vehicle design and fabrication. They plan to do this through club growth, future competitions, and their own Buckeye Vertical Lecture Series.

“Starting a student organization in the midst of a pandemic and navigating an engineering team in a predominately virtual environment definitely had its challenges,” Adithya Ramaswami, founder and president of Buckeye Vertical, said. “Being our first year in operation and having received this recognition feels incredible for the team. I am grateful to have worked with a phenomenal group of students and thankful for the support of the MAE department. There is always room for improvement, and we are looking forward to the upcoming year.”

Buckeye Vertical was founded in October 2020 by Ramaswami and Valcarcel and is advised by Drs. Jim Gregory and Matt McCrink. The team has worked on this project from October 2020 to April 2021. Interested students who want to get involved with Buckeye Vertical can email Adithya Ramaswami(.6@osu.edu).