A multidisciplinary team of more than 30 students from the University of Ljubljana has claimed first place at the 30th annual AIAA Design/Build/Fly competition, outperforming 98 university teams from around the world with their custom built radio controlled aircraft named “Brvinc.” The victory, secured during the April 16–19 event in Wichita, Kansas, marks a significant achievement for Slovenian engineering education on the global stage.
The competition, organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), is widely regarded as one of the most technically demanding student aviation contests globally. This year’s challenge required teams to design and construct a radio controlled bush plane capable of both cargo transport and banner towing a mission profile that tested versatility, structural strength, and aerodynamic stability under real world conditions. The Ljubljana team, known as the Edvard Rusjan Team, entered the fly off with strong momentum after earning second place in the preliminary technical report rankings. They opened with a successful ground mission and progressively improved their performance, achieving an impressive 6.6 second time in their final ground attempt. The competition itself was held at Textron Aviation’s Employees Flying Club and drew a record 1,179 students from 89 teams across 12 countries, making it the largest edition in the event’s history.
What set the Brvinc apart was its ability to perform reliably in adverse weather conditions that disrupted much of the field. Flight missions were conducted amid strong winds, storms, and even tornado warnings that forced a complete halt on the first day of competition. Despite these challenges, the Slovenian team completed all required missions, from a payload free test flight to cargo transport missions carrying rubber duck as passengers and hockey puck cargo, culminating in the competition’s most spectacular and unprecedented task: midflight banner deployment and towing. The aircraft successfully towed a 4.6 meter banner for seven laps on a windy final day, even as the same winds caused several competing aircraft to crash. According to team captain Jakob Erhartič, the team’s success was built on months of preparation and thousands of simulations written in Python, which proved 99.4% accurate in predicting real world performance. The name “Brvinc,” derived from a Primorska dialect word for ant, was chosen to reflect both the team’s hard working spirit and the aircraft’s remarkable capacity to tow a banner many times its own size, much as ants carry loads far exceeding their body weight.
The victory highlights the strength of interdisciplinary collaboration at the University of Ljubljana, with team members drawn from six faculties including Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer and Information Science, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, the Biotechnical Faculty, and the Faculty of Social Sciences. Team mentor Dr. Igor Petrovič attributed the win to the students’ high motivation, successful knowledge transfer from previous years’ competitions, and the remarkable number of voluntary hours invested in the project. Professor Dr. Jernej Klemenc, Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, emphasized that the achievement demonstrates the value of linking theoretical education with hands on practice. The University of Washington Seattle secured second place and a $2,000 prize, while UCLA took third with $1,500. For the first time, AIAA livestreamed the competition in collaboration with NASA Space Flight production, bringing the event to a broader audience. The Ljubljana team’s triumph serves as compelling evidence that with dedication, technical expertise, and strong institutional support, students from smaller European nations can not only compete with but outperform the world’s leading aerospace engineering programs.
