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Bangalore students get it Wright

Flying high: Students of the R.V. College of Engineering with their radio-controlled aircraft.

BANGALORE: Who among us has not dreamt of building an airplane with bare hands or letting similar dreams take flight on the wings of our creativity? This bunch of soon-to-be-engineers have pushed their dreams on to a trajectory and managed to go where no student has gone before.

Anand Holani, Dhiraj Viswanath B., Harshavardhana Tikare, Naveen B.L., Brinda Mehta and Debolina Sen from the R.V. College of Engineering, together built a radio-controlled aircraft named Vyoma and won a certificate for the most outstanding team. Being the first group to represent India at the international Aero Design Competition held by the Society of Automotive Engineers at Georgia, U.S., these high flyers seem curious, excited and much grounded in their aspirations. With most of them set to take up their placement offers, they confess that they may not be able to be very creative in the immediate future, but hope to use their knowledge to sustain their curiosities and innovative spirit.

The 55-pound, 10 cc engine cost them Rs. 9 lakh and more than a year to design, fabricate and test. With none of them being students of aeronautical engineering they had to educate themselves from the scratch. “We went back to the basics and used the libraries in IISc., NAL and HAL extensive. We knew we wanted to build something that flies and everything from know-how to funding was a problem,” says Vishwanath.

Having recently returned from a spectacular show and being treated like kings at college, Anand says that they felt humbled by the experience of being the first Indian team to go to the competition. Their college was as supportive as they can be, however, not having an aeronautical department they had to turn to various Government and private research bodies for help and guidance.

And it took as much effort and entrepreneurial skills to convince sponsors as it took to find the right materials, design the perfect combination and turn an amateur’s dream into reality. So, was it all worth the effort? “When we first started out we pooled in some pocket money and got ready to accept all failures. When you see all that effort pays off, there are not many words left to describe it,” says Harshavardhan.

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