The Beoavia team of master students at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Belgrade will present their Phoenix aircraft at the Air Cargo Challenge 2022 competition in Munich.
Two members of the team, David Cvetković and Jovan Antelj, won third place at the world competition with the Osa (Wasp) aircraft two years ago, and now they will appear with the Phoenix aircraft.
“We built this aircraft completely independently last season, and this year we plan to build another one to perform as many flight tests as possible. In the meantime, we have started another project called Kos (Blackbird), a successor to the Osa project. This one will have the feature of vertical take-off and landing”, said Cvetković to RTS.
Based on the advantages they saw in the designs of their European colleagues, they decided to alter their design a little, although their colleagues also picked up a few ideas from them.
Jovan Antelj says they are satisfied with their new aircraft, and that the reactions of their colleagues were very positive.
“When they saw our aircraft, they thought we would win first place, since we’d applied the latest technology, with engines that slide in and out”, says Antelj.
The tasks of this year’s competition are for the aircraft to take off vertically, like a helicopter, and then continue the flight like a classic aircraft; to perform some operations, do a loop, return to the place of takeoff and land vertically.
These tasks arose for practical reasons, because airlines are looking for a new principle in aircraft, since most airports in large cities are no longer able to expand.
This year’s competition in Munich will be held live, and in addition to this competition, the Beoavia team will also appear at the Airbus competition and the NFC competition.
Photo: Beoavia