As the academic year draws closer to an end, the UCLA Design Build Fly (DBF) team finishes off a historic season for the club, its best showing ever in the International DBF competition. Facing off against nearly 100 universities from across the world, UCLA cemented itself as a top team in the competition with its first podium finish in the club’s history, securing 3rd place.
DBF is an annual competition hosted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Every year, there is a new set of missions that challenge teams to design, manufacture, and test an electric-powered, radio-controlled aircraft. The 2026 AIAA DBF competition featured missions inspired by bush-plane businesses that charter passengers and tow banner advertisements.
This year, Mission 1 (M1) demonstrated the aircraft’s flight capabilities without a payload. Mission 2 (M2) was a charter flight with a payload of rubber ducks (passengers) and hockey pucks (cargo). Mission 3 (M3) was a banner flight, during which the aircraft deployed, towed, and released a banner. Additionally, Ground Mission (GM) was a timed demonstration of the payload installation and unloading for M2 and M3.
One of the critical features of the competition identified by the UCLA team from the start of the year was the inherent contradictions between M2 and GM. A plane well-suited to carry a large payload of passengers and cargo for M2 would be very slow to load and unload during GM, so it was deemed impossible to receive a high score in both missions simultaneously.
In a daring move, the UCLA team decided to go outside its comfort zone and determined that the best strategy for Goose, this year’s competition aircraft, would be to carry a minimal payload of just three passengers while optimizing the aircraft for GM and M3. This strategy paid off, as the team ended up placing 3rd out of 98 teams from 12 different countries across the world, despite being one of the only top teams at the competition composed only of undergraduate students.
The team is split into 6 primary subteams: Aerodynamics, CAD, Manufacturing, Propulsion & Electronics, R&D, and Structures, each of which was responsible for a major subsystem on the aircraft. The subteams are open to all students at UCLA, no prior experience necessary. Each team has an extensive new-member-training program hosted by the club which trains the members on everything they need to know to succeed.
Each subteam provides crucial hands-on experience to its members, from running real fluids and structures simulations on components of the plane to optimize their design to actually building the aircraft itself. Learning industry-standard software and having the chance to take ownership over components of a technical project like this prepares the students for a career in aerospace.
Already the team is preparing for next year as they await the new set of mission requirements from AIAA. This time, the team is aiming for nothing short of 1st place.
Further information about the club can be found on their website: https://www.dbfucla.com/
Information on the competition and the final scores can be found on AIAA’s website: https://aiaa.org/dbf/
Contributions:
Administrative Leads:
Project Manager – Kelsey Dignan
Chief Engineer – Petr Tupitsyn
Internal Affairs Officer – Aayush Sehgal
Lab Manager – Grace Mullen
Media Officer – Matthew NguyenTechnical Leads:
Aerodynamics Lead – Terry Wang
Propulsion & Electronics Lead – Aaron Hu
R&D Lead – Daniel Wang
Structures Lead – Beatrice Aurelia Suherman
Pilot – Derek MurciaMission Specific Contributors:
Banner Mechanism Responsible Engineer (RE) – Andrew Hoang
Puck Mechanism Design – Tyler Hong
GM Assembly Crew Member – Atiksh PaulGeneral Members Attending:
Alexander Ananian, Benjamin Perez, Brandon Holland, Brandon Suzuki, Brandon Tse, Christine Yang, Denica Tran, Justin Oh, Kenneth Fambro, Kyle Coon, Lilian Pamula, Miriam Pomerantsev, Nickolas Khoury, Ryan Chick, Steven Ha
