After an abrupt corona-related end of the 2020 DBF competition in March, the team decided to organize a final event to celebrate and round off this year’s project.
As soon as we were allowed to enter the FH JOANNEUM laboratory again our competition aircraft Mosquito was finished and ready to fly. The idea of the alternative fly-off was to invite European universities to Styria to prove and show off the great potential of the aircraft to each other. With this in mind, six team members of the University of Aachen made their way to Graz over the weekend of October 10, 2020.
On a beautiful autumnal Saturday, we met with Aachen‘s students at 9:00 a.m. and after a short tour of our laboratory, we made our way together to the model airfield in Weiz. Once there, we spent the first minutes and probably hours looking at and inspecting the other aircraft and its mechanisms. Shortly afterwards the missions started, and the excitement rose to maximum. Beginning with a simulation of the ground mission, up to the banner flight and the passenger & luggage loaded mission. During these hours the thought came up again how great the experience in the USA would have been and how interesting it would be to observe over 100 other aircraft designs. Nevertheless, one could see the joy on our faces under the masks after a successful day marked by pizza, beer and lots of resin. After this fly-off event we could finally find some closure with the 2020 competition and jA Aeronautics can finally open a new chapter. In this sense we, the DBF 2020 Team, wish all the best to next year’s team members.
