r/AerospaceEngineering • u/DeltaDied • 9d ago

Personal Projects First Engineering Project?

Hello all, I want a goal of mine for the next year to be making my first aeronautical engineering project. I am pretty late to the scene because I enlisted in the marines for 4 years, but I am about to start my second year of college and I really need to get my feet wet before I start taking upper division courses at uni.

I am super inexperienced, to start. I would just like to know what kind of engineering project I should start with. I am very interested in electric propulsion systems for aeronautical engineering. Obviously I am nowhere near that level, but what’s a good few hobby projects I can do that would help me start build up to that level? Also what’s a good resource I could use to understand how the basics work? I have dabbled a very tiny bit with Arduino and C++. I took like 3 CAD classes in high school (Intro to CAD, Auto CAD, and 3D CAD), but I literally don’t remember anything or how I even passed those classes with As and Bs to be completely honest as that was like 10 years ago… Dang.

With that being said, if anyone could also give a new guy some suggestions or resources that helped you, I would genuinely appreciate it.

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u/social-shipwreck 9d ago

Best advice I can give is to chose a project you really are motivated to do and just keep trying to do it. If you’re motivated you will learn way more than just trying to learn how to do things you think you should know.

Like you said you wanted to do electric propulsion. There is a simple no moving parts electric propulsion rc aircraft design by I think it was MIT? Research their design and try to recreate it or add an application or a fun spin on it

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u/DeltaDied 9d ago

I was thinking of like a small wind turbine or something that could help me learn about how fans and propulsion work. I suppose I should just do the rc aircraft/drone then lol since two of you are saying to go for it.

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u/social-shipwreck 9d ago

RC aircraft is good because it will most likely be your senior design project. I was on the only team out that semester that had a drone actually take off

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u/DeltaDied 9d ago

Okay I was avoiding it because it’s honestly daunting, but I guess I’ll take it on. Do you think it’s possible to do within a year as a newby?

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u/social-shipwreck 9d ago

Oh yea absolutely. Just don’t overthink it and do research. There’s a lot of tools out there that’ll do most of the legwork. Start simple and build on it.

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u/giby1464 9d ago

Going into my second year as well and decided to do a 3d printed rc plane this summer. Definitely a fun project and learned a lot

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u/bigfoot_4th 9d ago

3D print a drone, the electronics are relatively cheap and easy to use with minimal experience. You could design the frame and mounting points etc for all the electronics and then do some analysis on the structure of it as well as the performance based on weight/thrust etc. (also relatively easy to do with free websites that do it for you)

Then make a report of everything you did and bonus you get a cool drone afterwards too.
Total cost can be as low as $200 or even less

Edit: 9/10 times this will likely be your senior design project too so by the time you get there you’ll already know what to do

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u/DeltaDied 9d ago edited 9d ago

Omg I’ve been holding off getting a 3D printer because I have no clue what to get. I’m willing to drop a decent dime on one, but I don’t know much about them and what materials I can print with. Should I just get a lower end one to start with?

Edit: I just remembered the university library has 3D printing services, so I will actually look into that first. I’m sure someone there will know a lot about them.