In spring 2023 we were too small to be recognised by the university, which meant no funding and no institutional support. We still wanted to enter the 2024 Air Cargo Challenge, so instead of waiting, the board started its own RC modelling workshop: Flight Club. Davide M. Como, our secretary at the time, wrote up the whole story for the EUROAVIA blog.
A nearby airfield lent us a small hut for building and repairs, and let us use its runway. In return we paid a small rent and helped promote its flight school. Everyone in the group was invited, with no selection. About a dozen people joined and chipped in for tools and materials.
From April to June 2023 we met once a week after lectures. The programme had three parts:
- Theory: conceptual and preliminary design, flight mechanics, structures, and the rules of thumb of RC aircraft.
- Building: Depron foam, wooden spars and longerons, and poplar plywood where the loads were highest.
- Flying: first on a PC simulator, using the radio transmitter as a joystick, then with an old trainer.
The result was FCP1 (Flight Club Project 1), a high-wing electric trainer with a box fuselage and a landing gear bent from aluminium plate. Floods in May turned the runway into mud, so we made bigger foam wheels; then exams got in the way. FCP1 finally flew on 26 June 2023. It was quick, controllable and easy to take off and land.
We missed the ACC registration that year, and setting up an officially recognised technical team would have taken more than a year. So we ran Flight Club again, with more time and more experienced members, and added panel-method aerodynamics, MATLAB flight simulations and CAD. The second prototype, FCP2, flew too.
