Our Crowdfunding Groups
We've reached our goal of $2000 and now have a new goal of $4000! Thank you all for your support! We're hoping to keep up the momentum and raise another $2000 to help our team travel to Van Nuys this April!
Aerospace SAE is UC Berkeley's only competitive fixed-wing aircraft design organization. We compete in the SAE Aero Design West competition, which challenges students to design, analyze, and build an aircraft which can overcome various challenges. As an organization, we are not only competitive, but we also strive to educate young engineers in skills that will be useful for the rest of their engineering career.
Members of our team at the 2023 SAE Aero Design West Competition During our design phase, we use professional software such as MATLAB, SolidWorks, and Ansys to design and optimize our aircraft. Then, in the spring semester (right now!), we begin to manufacture and assemble the aircraft. This involves countless hours of hands-on work in the wood shop, machine shop, and Makerspace as we cut, machine, glue, and fasten various components of the aircraft.
Members of our club assembling the fuselage structure of the aircraft
Members of our club using a laser cutter to manufacture the aircraft's airfoilsOf course, the materials that we use don't come for free! In fact, the high-quality specific materials we use on our plane, such as balsa wood, spruce wood, and 6061 aluminum are quite expensive. Additionally, we need to transport our completed aircraft to Van Nuys, California in mid-April for our competition. The costs add up quick and the diagram below shows our spending during the last competition season, 2022-23.
Budget breakdown for 2022-23 seasonWe expect our spending this year to be similar, and this is where you come in! The $2,000 goal for this crowdfunding campaign is intended to help us reach meet our Materials costs this competition season. Your donations would go a long way in helping us obtain the necessary materials used in making our aircraft. Even a small donation would be great! From all our team members, we thank you!
If the project is not fully funded, all donations will still be transferred. Aerospace SAE will still make every effort to find another way to bring the project to life using the funds that are provided, and we will let our donors know how we will be spending funds!
If you have any questions, feel free to contact Dylan Lee at dlee1009@berkeley.edu.
We'll give you a shout-out in our Instagram post promoting this crowdfunding campaign! (Note: please send us your Instagram handle if you'd like this perk. That way we can tag you in the shout-out!)
We'll put a decal of your choosing on our competition plane!
Meet our members and see our aircraft during a tour of our workspaces! If you'd like to visit us, this can be an in-person tour; otherwise, we'd be happy to schedule a Zoom meeting!
