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CAL Aerospace SAE
I spent three years on CAL Aerospace SAE helping design, build, and test competition aircraft, and we placed third nationally in 2025.
Background
CAL Aerospace SAE is a student run team that competes every year at SAE West against around 75 teams. Students own everything from design to manufacturing. In April 2025, we placed third nationally at Aero SAE West.
Structures lead (2024 to 2025)
As structures lead, I oversaw airplane design, construction, and final assembly for competition. I coordinated across subteams, kept workstreams moving, and made sure we stayed within structural and performance requirements. I used SolidWorks and Ansys FEA to validate fuselage, tail, and landing gear decisions. I also helped recruit and onboard new members and ran beginner workshops so new engineers could contribute quickly.
Landing gear lead (2023 to 2024)
As landing gear lead, I managed a team of eight students and focused on compressive strength under high landing loads. With SolidWorks and Ansys FEA, we improved landing gear performance by about 30%. I handled timelines, design reviews, prototyping, and test planning. We used both additive and subtractive manufacturing for aluminum, printed, and carbon fiber parts, and worked closely with other subteams so final integration stayed clean.
Electrical team (2022 to 2023)
On the electrical team, I processed sensor data to model aircraft forces and correlated motor power with airspeed in MATLAB. I worked with more than 1,000 lines of data from six sensors to compare measured and calculated thrust. I also designed and calibrated an analog pitot based airspeed sensor on an ESP32 for real time readings. That work helped validate our models before competition.