By Steve Manganelli
University of California San Diego has capstone design classes in Engineering Departments other than Aerospace. I discovered this while on the Campus of UCSD on May 17 where my intended purpose was to deliver a lecture to Dr. John Hwang’s MAE-155B Aerospace Engineering Capstone Design Class entitled “Pratfalls of R/C Model Design”. However whilst on my way to their Engineering Lab to review progress thus far, I was intercepted by a group of Mechanical Engineering students whom had their own pretty ambitious project in mind : develop an R/C Model autogiro that would takeoff, fly around the pattern and land autonomously!
The first small step in autonomous flight is piloted flight which of course, none of them was experienced in doing. So after many crashes, they enlisted me to perform some additional crashes for them as apparently, I don’t know how to fly an autogiro either! The team consisting of lead Aaditya Shivadey, members Arham Nawaf and Pranav Sakhuja and Telemetry Operator/Controller Rouchen Li met me on SEFSD Field on May 22nd, 2025 with all their spare parts, charged batteries, tools and laptop computers at the ready. In the interim I did a little research on R/C autogiros and discovered they are weight sensitive and even larger batteries would make one difficult to fly. The students informed me that the 150+ grams of added autopilots, GPS receiver, compass, camera, transmitter, pitot tubes, etc. were no problem…sure and that their custom made carbon fiber tube reinforced floatation foam fuselage was just like the OEM one they crashed : OK, roger that!
We decided that some headwind would be good so we waited until 1:00 P.M for the maiden voyage. Sure enough, after engaging the pre-start motor, we rolled down about ½ the runway without taking off, the throttle was retarded and heads were scratched : more runway!
Next time, the beast was placed on the East end of runway and I stood at the sign to better monitor the takeoff roll. She finally got up enough steam to levitate about 20 ft from the West end of the runway clearing the bushes by a few feet but not enough beans to make the downwind turn : crash again, but no real damage as she was a tough little cuss and the process repeated. One memorable crash ended up in one of the drainage cuts made on the North side of runway (with a lot of silt around them). I had inadvertently left the pre-spin motor running which began churning up a huge cloud of dust after impact. We first pegged this as a lipo fire until we got close to it; disaster averted! The last test flight of the session got even windier and we attained at least 25’ by the time we cleared the runway. I banked left, then right (maybe). She crossed the fence, then headed back over the runway and plowed in with a skier style “yardsale”, parts everywhere. The students were not dissuaded, feeling they learned a lot. The telemetry master indicted they lost link and it was inalterably programmed to “return to home” : Hong Kong? UCSD? Maybe I didn’t crash it after all!
I was quite surprised to have a 2nd test fly session request from the students for June 5th. The broken parts replaced and the fuselage rebuilt with the same construction. I.e. still over weight. Mostly the same results as the previous session. After one aborted takeoff, in the middle of the runway, I bailed out and pulled the throttle to off. Defiantly, she took off anyway, climbed to about 25 ft then made a successful 180 degree turn to downwind all with the throttle stick jammed to off! Okay, maybe I can steer this after all, so “we” made a base and final turn approaching the runway, then it plowed itself into the ground about 50’ short. Notice there is no more “we” ; failure is an orphan. When I told the students what I did vs what it did, they were elated as about 90% of their flight goal of a complete autonomous flight had been achieved and another opportunity to help our future aerospace engineering community safely in the books!
