Be the Wind beneath our Wings!

About Us:

Team Vaayushastra was formed in 2012 to represent Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering in SAE Aero-design series of Competitions. Since its creation, we have participated in the advanced class of the competition 5 times constantly improving on our results. The team is formed entirely out of undergraduate students of the college with an aptitude and interest in Airplanes and their workings. Currently, the team has 19 members coming from the different disciplines of the college. The team has 4 major departments, namely:

1) Design and Modelling Department

2) DAS (Data Acquisition System) Department

3) GUI (Graphic User Interface) Department

4) Sponsorship and Documentation Department

Connect with Team Vaayushastra through Facebook, Instagram, and our website.

About our Competition:

The SAE Aero Design competition is intended to provide undergraduate and graduate engineering students with real-life challenges. The competition has been designed to provide exposure to the kinds of situations that engineers face in their real-life work environment. Throughout the years the problem statement of the competition has evolved to provide a variety of objectives for the student teams to fulfill. The most recent problem statement has advanced class teams trying to simulate a prototype mission to Mars by having their Unmanned Aerial Vehicle deliver colonists and supplies to a drop zone autonomously. Teams are judged throughout the 3-day long competition based on several parameters including technical presentation skills and design report writing.

SAE Aero Design features three classes of competition-Regular, Advanced, and Micro. Team Vaayushastra participates in the Advanced Class of this competition and this class requires teams to have a systematic approach to the design while integrating several engineering disciplines: aeronautical, mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering. The ultimate end goal for this class is an autonomous flight with a "purpose" decided every year by rules committee members.

(Visit the SAE site and follow SAE on Facebook for more information on the competition.)

Our Achievements:

Team Vaayushastra has had a consistent record at the competition. In its debut appearance in the year 2013, the team exceeded all expectations by attaining a global 10th position despite having no experience and a team of only 7 members. The following year in 2014, we secured a global 7th position. In the year 2015, the team attained the 1st place in the Technical Presentation Round superseding reputed international teams. We also improved on our previous overall rank and attained a global 6th position. In the 2016 season, the team retained its global rank while outperforming every other team from the Asia-Pacific region. In 2017, the team secured an international 5th rank while also bagging the 3rd position in the presentation round. However, in 2018 we suffered a major drop in our rankings due to a severe crash in the first flight round ending up 13th in the competition. The following year we worked extra hard to ensure that we do not repeat our past mistakes and it paid off in March of 2019 when we secured a global 9th rank and stood 5th in our Technical Presentation. This year we plan to better our rank even more and build the absolute best aircraft in the whole competition!

Where does your money go?

The budget of our project is naturally high considering that our airplane is created from scratch every year by our student members. In order for us to be the best at what we do it is vital that we design our aircraft to meet the toughest and most stringent testing criteria. We also try to incorporate many new and innovative features in our aircraft year after year to make it stand out in the crowd. In order for us to turn our designs into reality and compete with top international teams, we need a sizable amount of money. There are various sensors that go onboard to assist in the dropping of the autonomous payloads. We also use high-quality materials like carbon fiber and fiberglass in the manufacturing of the aircraft which add to the cost of the project.

The money that you provide us with goes a long way in assuring that we acquire these components and materials and are able to turn our dreams into reality. This not only helps us in achieving a better result at the competition but also encourages our budding engineers to innovate and test their ideas in a real-world scenario.

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