I said in my previous post that I thought I was set for the school year.  As of today, I am two steps closer to being prepared for August.  Firstly, I ordered my linens through RHL, which was recommended by ERAU.  At first I was apprehensive about the company because the price seemed too good to be true.  Well, the package arrived today and, for the amount it cost, the quality was great.  Everything looks well made and I think that I’ll be happy with it.  Being able to order all of my bedding and bath needs for at least the first couple years takes away some stress because it’s one more thing I would have had to do later.  Buying a package also ensures that you don’t forget any necessary items.

Secondly, last weekend, I applied for my student loan in about half an hour.  Embry Riddle sent me a letter with all of the information I needed to get started and through the process.  They were helpful in providing the information of various lenders as well.

I’m graduating in two weeks, so things have been winding down at school.  I have been the newsletter editor and publisher in our NJROTC unit after creating the first one during my sophomore year.  I have since published nine issues, each one progressively better than the last.  Over the past couple weeks I have been busy designing and putting together my final newsletter issue which will be handed out at our annual Awards Night.  I also completed a three month internship at Northrop Grumman last week, where I worked as a graphics/print service intern.  I enjoy building websites, graphics, and video production, so the amount of time spent at Northrop, however short, was very beneficial to me and I hope to continue using my skills in graphics at Embry Riddle.

Hi,

This is my first posting on the ERAU Blog, with many more to come.  My name is Austin Troya, and I am currently a high school senior at Westview High School in San Diego, CA.  I am the Admin officer in our NJROTC unit, which will be a good lead-in to my joining AFROTC at Embry Riddle.  Next year I will be starting as a mechanical engineering major at ERAU.  I enjoy theatre production a lot and work at my church for about 12 hours per week doing either audio, lights, or video.  This week and last week, I will have put in about 60 hours as we set up, rehearsed, and produced the Sound of Music.  I am running lights for the show (the picture shows me with my light board).

I’d like to talk a little about my experience with Embry Riddle so far.  I first heard about Embry Riddle at the end of my Freshman year in high school since one of our other ROTC cadets was going there.  My family and I began emailing Doug Dickey not long after I was accepted in December.  He and the other admissions staff members helped us figure out financing, scheduled a visit with the ambassador program, and everything else necessary to prepare me for next year.  I recently found out that I had been awarded an AFROTC scholarship, which is part of the reason I am joining the program.  As of now, I have everything lined up for August with the exception of maybe a few minor details.  I look forward to the summer and especially mid-August when I will move into the dorm and begin my college experience.

When the school year starts, I hope to become involved in intramural soccer and maybe some of the on-campus clubs.  I will also try to take help with shows put on by the Prescott Performing Arts Center.

This semester has been really busy. My favorite class is EGR 200. In this class, we learn how to work with CATIA and complete the conceptual designing of an aircraft. Prof. Helbling made this class very interesting. CATIA is Windows-based and thus it generally has a steep learning curve and everyone feels at ease after a couple of weeks. We ended our CATIA classes by developing a rough scaled model of our conceptually designed aircraft. Figure 1 shows the aircraft.

Figure 1: Rough scaled model of Dassault Falcon 50

The aircraft that our team build was an improved version of the Dassault (R) Falcon 50. We added winglets to it and did some preliminary calculations to find its effect on our range, lift-drag ratio and various other calculations. The team came up with an 8% increase in range just because of the addition of winglets at its cruising speed of 0.8 Mach. We also improved our lift/drag ratio by incorporating a better lift producing airfoil. The team then built a scaled and as-accurate-as-it gets model in CATIA and then used the 3-D Printer present in the AxFab Building to build a 3-d Model of our aircraft which would be tested in the wind tunnel. The following figure shows the 3D model.

The flow visualization was done in the wind tunnel using a white fluid that was applied on the wings section of the aircraft. It was used to visualize the flow when the wind tunnel was run. It was run at two different angles of attack. 2 deg was selected as the first one because it was the cruising AOA for the chosen aircraft. Flow visualization was also done at 14 degrees, since it was the calculated angles. The following pictures will show the neatly attached flows at 2 deg and accuracy of the calculated stall angle. Note that in stall, reverse flow occurs which is quite interesting.

At AOA of 2 degrees, observe the neatly attached flow on the wing sections.

At AOA of 14 degrees, the reverse flow is observed. This is the calculated stall angle.

The classes ended with the team giving a presentation on what kind of changes were made. The list of sub-sections were: Introduction, Preliminary Ideas, Refinement, Preliminary Analysis, Final Decision and Final Analysis, Recommendations and Conclusions.

It was the best class I have ever had yet!!