Our Experience at the SAE Aero Design East 2025

2025 marked a major milestone for WatArrow as we returned to the SAE Aero Design competition for the second time since the team's inception. After learning from our first year of competition, we came back bigger, stronger, and more prepared than ever. What followed was our most successful competition experience so far and an experience that brought our team closer together both on and off the flight line.

Challenge Accepted For SAE Aero Design 2025, the WatArrow team travelled to Fort Worth, Texas, to compete in the Micro Class. The trip itself was an adventure. We drove all the way from Waterloo, Ontario, making the roughly 20-hour journey to Texas together as a team.

Our team had grown significantly since our first year, almost doubling in size. With more members came more ideas, more hands to help, and a stronger sense of what we could accomplish together. We arrived in Texas with two planes ready to compete and a clear goal: put everything we had learned in our first year into practice.

Our competition aircraft, DART, was designed and built specifically for the challenges of the Micro Class. While having two planes ready gave us some flexibility, we quickly learned that competition rarely goes exactly according to plan.

Our Somewhat Rough Start The first day of competition began with a technical inspection and test flights — and ended with one of our biggest challenges. During testing, DART crashed and most of the wing and airframe suffered a lot of damage.

With the competition ahead of us, we spent most of the night rebuilding the plane, working together to repair the damage and get back into the air. It was a long night, but it was also a moment that demonstrated what makes WatArrow special. Everyone stepped in where they could, and the team worked together toward the same goal: getting our aircraft ready for another attempt.

By the time we finished rebuilding, we were exhausted, but DART was ready to fly again.

Day Two, Five Flights and One Plane The second day was where all of the hard work from the night before was paid off.

We started the day by completing our technical inspection again. Once we were cleared to fly, we got to work. Over the next couple hours, we completed five successful flights using a single plane — with no crashes.

We approached each flight progressively. Rather than immediately loading DART with a large payload, we started with no payload and gradually increased the amount of water in our water tank. Each successful flight gave us more confidence and allowed us to push the aircraft further.

By the end of the day, we had accomplished something we were incredibly proud of: five successful flights after rebuilding the aircraft the night before.

The Results On the third day, we completed one final flight before the flight line closed and then attended the awards ceremony immediately after. Our top three flights counted toward our mission score, and we finished with 45.44 points for the mission component.

When our design report and presentation scores were included, WatArrow finished with a total score of 110.84 points. With this score, we placed third in the mission component and fifth overall in the Micro Class.

For our second year competing at SAE Aero Design, this was a huge accomplishment. We had come a long way since our first competition, and seeing the results of all the work that went into DART made the long nights, countless design iterations, and hours of preparation worth it.

More Than Just Competition While our competition was the reason we travelled to Texas, it wasn't the only thing that made the trip memorable.

Between flights and competition activities, the team also had the opportunity to explore Texas together. We went on fishing trips, spent time shopping, and visited downtown Dallas. These experiences gave us the chance to step away from the aircraft and simply enjoy being around one another.

For a student engineering team, those moments are just as important as the technical work. Spending time together outside of meetings and the bay helped us build stronger relationships and learn more about the people behind the team.

After the competition, we started the long drive back to Waterloo. Rather than rushing home, we stayed at a couple of different Airbnbs along the way and took some extra time to rest and enjoy being a team. After three intense days of competition, it was a chance to celebrate what we had accomplished and reflect on the experience together. We used this opportunity to reflect on what we could be doing better, already preparing for the next year of designing and competing.

Our Team Our 2025 Aero Design experience was about much more than placing fifth overall. It was about coming back stronger and learning from our experiences in 2024.

After our first year competing, we knew what we needed to improve — technically, competitively, and as a team. In 2025, we saw those lessons come together. We expanded our team, built DART, prepared two competition aircraft, recovered from a crash, successfully completed six flights, and achieved our best competition result so far.

But perhaps the most fulfilling part of the experience was seeing how much we enjoyed doing it together.

At WatArrow, our team culture is built on strong relationships between our peers. We work hard, but we also make time to have fun, get to know each other, and enjoy the experience of building something together. That culture is a huge part of what gives us our edge.

The 2025 SAE Aero Design competition showed us that resilience, preparation and engineering all matter, but so do the people you build with.

We left Texas with a fifth-place overall finish, a third-place mission result, and plenty of lessons for the future. More importantly, we came back as a stronger team, with stronger relationships and an even greater sense of what WatArrow can accomplish together.