Design and manufacture of the remote-controlled aircraft Brvinc for the design/build/fly 2026 competition
Jakob Erhartič, Igor Petrović, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Design/Build/Fly is an annual aerospace design competition organised by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Its main goal is to give students the opportunity to apply their theoretical knowledge to design and manufacture a remote-controlled (RC) aircraft for a specific set of missions. Student teams engage in problem-solving, research, development, testing, and ultimately the flight demonstration of their aircraft at the competition. This paper describes the aircraft Brvinc, designed and manufactured by the Edvard Rusjan Team from the University of Ljubljana. First, a brief overview of the DBF 2026 rules and regulations is provided, with this year’s focus on efficient passenger and cargo transport as well as banner towing. Our approach to the preliminary design of the aircraft, manufacturing process, flight testing and validation is detailed next. Finally, the paper summarizes the team’s outstanding performance at the fly-off, where it secured first place.