Between the 4th and 7th of October, 2007, the IX SAE Brazil Aerodesign Competition was held in Sao Jose dos Campos within the dependencies of CTA, bringing together more than 60 teams from schools of all over Brazil as well as representatives from Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico. As usual, the EESC-USP Team marked it’s presence.

Every year we hope anxiously for just a few days of competition, and it is no less. For it’s the test of a year’s worth of work, to see our plane fly with maximum load, to see the crashes (it’s life), the expectation of seeing the works of other great teams that, on a general basis, tend to surprise with some interesting and encouraging innovation and to encourage the new coming teams. Moreover, speaking of innovation, our team is not left back, we know that it is always necessary to innovate and, why not, risk. The dedication of each member to the hard work of almost a year plus the experience of our team, which participated in all the previous editions of this competition, were key factors to the excellent performance that the team has achieved on this ninth edition.

However, how can we say that if we were not champions in any of the categories? It is quite simple; we made history with the lighter aircraft and more structural efficient ever: EESC-USP Alpha, 2.39 lb (1,085 kg) when empty and 13.12 lb (5,9 kg) of cargo. Moreover, what about a team of “rookies”, i.e., formed only by students who never participated in the competition and where most of them were in the first year of graduation, which finishes the competition in fourth place? Also worth highlighting, our open class aircraft, EESC-USP Charlie, who received the honorable mentions for Best Design and Best Oral Presentation, lifted 44 lb and won the second place in it’s category.

We of course would like to be champions (as any other team) with each of our aircrafts, after all that is the whole point, to design and build a champion airplane be it more traditional as the Bravo or more daring as the Alpha. However, it is quite impossible to predict everything that other teams will come up with or even foresee all the problems inherent in our own airplanes. Therefore, we are very happy with this outcome, but that does not mean we just sit back in the coming months until the publication of the new regulation, we are working hard on the project for the international competition, which will occur in the U.S. in April, and we promise to represent Brazil very well as we always do.