MAYDAY MAYDAY !!!!!

Last semester I entered a "Build Your Own Plane" competition with Yoni and some grad student named Sergey. We won the competition. Last Thursday, the AIAA (American Institute of Aerospace and Aeronautics) Club (of which I am a member) held a second "Build Your Own Plane" competition. This time I entered with one of my fellow freshman engineers, Pavel. After the last competition, people complained about a post-doc winning first place, so I had to prove that it wasn’t all him this time.
This time we had to build a glider, so I came up with a long thin wing design. The Targum (Rutgers Newspaper) was covering the competition [registration may be required]. So we built our plane and tested it, made some alterations, and then completed the plane we dubbed the U² because it looked like the U2 spy plane. We went to the flight range (a classroom in the engineering building) and started the competition.
Sadly most planes didn’t actually fly, others did but had a high stall speed, and most that actually flew hit the ground at the bottom of the room. Then it was our turn, I threw it first and it hit the ceiling, then Pavel threw it and it glided gracefully across the room hitting the wall very high up, the third run did the same but the long way of the room. With the first messed up flight we still had a total flight time of 10.7 seconds of flight hindered very much by the fact that it kept hitting the walls 2/3 of the way up. We won.

Here is a picture of the two planes that my teams built and that both won first place in the AIAA display case. (the tails are removed to get them into the case)

(The smaller one top left is the first, the bigger one with the U² on it is the recent one)

Here is a picture from the Targum of my plane flying.
And of course here is the link to the actual article.
University Engineers Aim For The Sky
(registration may be required but shouldn't be)