UCLA’s Design Build Fly (DBF) team recently had its best showing ever in the International DBF competition, placing 3rd out of 98 teams from around the world, a podium finish! Design Build Fly 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.
Mission 1 (M1) demonstrates the aircraft’s flight capabilities without a payload. Mission 2 (M2) is a charter flight with a payload of rubber ducks and hockey pucks. Mission 3 (M3) is a banner flight, during which the aircraft deploys, tows, and releases a banner. Ground Mission (GM) is a timed demonstration of the payload installation and unloading for M2 and M3.
The UCLA DBF competition aircraft, Goose, is designed to optimize for M3 and GM, as was determined by the team to be the best option to achieve a high total mission score. This strategy paid off, as the UCLA team ended up placing 3rd out of 98 teams from 12 different countries.
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
