Hot News UVa Students Win NASA Award

This article appeared in the August 2, 1998 issue of the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Tech, U.Va. are victors at aircraft design contest
by Peter Bacqué
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

U.Va. team receives award at Oshkosh '98

OSHKOSH, Wis.--Two Virginia universities took top honors in a national competition to improved light aircraft design yesterday.

Virginia Tech won first place in the 1998 National General Aviation Design Competition sponsored by NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration, and a team from the University of Virginia won third place.

The 27-member team of Tech students won for their "VicTor" design, a single-engine high-performance airplane carrying four people.

The awards were presented during the AirVenture 98, the annual convention and fly-in of the Experimental Aircraft Association, the largest organization of sport aviation pilots in the world.

U.Va.'s student tead was honored for developing a computer program that predicts resistance to airflow int he design of new small passenger airplanes.

The U.Va. team based its program on the Falco light kit aircraft produced by Sequoia Aircraft Corp. of Richmond.

Virginia Tech's team received a $3,000 prize, and the school's Department of Mechanical, Nuclear and Aerospace Engineering also received $5,000.

U.Va.'s team members shared a $1,000 prize.

The Virginia Space Grant Consortium, based in Hampton, manages the competition for NASA and the FAA.

Tech's VicTor aircraft was designed in nine months and the plane could be built for about $200,000, said Dr. James F. Marchman III, a Tech engineering professor and the team's adviser.

The pressurized aircraft is designed to fly as fast as 265 miles per hour using a small turboprop engine.

Asked what the design competition taught them, team member Joe Honaker, of Lewisburg, W.Va., said, "How little we know about airplanes."