Your donations directly contribute to essential resources like building materials, safety equipment, tools, and travel expenses for our team.
Each contribution enables us to offer more hands-on workshops that goes beyond the classroom—helping students gain real-world engineering experience in a fun and collaborative environment.
We’re always looking for ways to grow and improve what we offer our members, and every bit of support brings us closer to that goal!
Every year we have previous members come back to do training workshops on various building techniques, general aircraft design, and introduction to CAD. Through this, members can experiment and learn with and from their peers in a more casual environment, where mistakes and new ideas are welcomed to help encourage further experimentation and learning. We are also working towards hopefully getting company workshops to help further our introductory trainings.
The two main types of build processes we use are composites and built up. Both of these have their own benefits, and by finding a good balance of the two, year to year we are able to create a high performing aircraft and improve on our techniques. We often use carbon fiber, fiberglass, balsa, epoxy, monokote, superglue, foam, and some various hardware in all of our planes from prototyping up to the finished competition model. We love giving our members the opportunity to experiment and learn with each of these methods, and having the extra materials to practice and learn outside of the aircraft in workshops enables us to run these extra sessions.
The competition alternates being hosted between Tucson Arizona and Wichita Kansas. We've been able to take approximately 15-20 members each year to competition, covering the costs for the hotel at both sites, and airfare costs for Kansas. This helps with networking between not only other teams but also some of the companies that are there and sponsoring the competition. It is an amazing experience to see how each team has interpreted the rules and optimized for specific missions, to learn from and talk with people you might end up working with, and to see your hard work pay off. We hope to keep taking more members, and eventually start being able to help with food costs as well.
We would like to thank to everyone who has contributed to the success of the Coppertails. Whether through sharing technical knowledge, assisting with design and manufacturing processes, or providing financial support, your involvement has been instrumental in helping our team design, build, and fly our aircraft at competition.
Your support has directly enhanced the educational experience of our members, enabling us to offer mentorship and hands-on learning opportunities that extend well beyond the classroom. We would not be able to achieve our goals—or develop our team’s skills to the same extent—without your generosity.
If you would like to support our team and help us continue providing meaningful, hands-on learning experiences for our members, please reach out to prdbfclb@erau.edu or you can make a donation here to Prescott Clubs AF19650.
