A year or two ago, I had looked at the SAE Aero Design competition results for a few years.
I found that:
1. Indian teams scored high on paper work
2. But zero on flight

As far as I could make out, no Indian team made even a single successful flight.

That makes me sad!

My observations may be out dated, or wrong due to not looking at all results.

So I request anyone who has info about success of Indian teams in SAE competitions to post here, as an inspiration to other young Indians

Thanks

Don't know too much about it, but yes, young Harshil Mane has been making waves

http://scaleaeros.com.au/StaticResults//2019-ASAA-Nationals/report_pilot_7002.html

In the record books

I am not completely sure but I read 5-6 month back there is some Indian college team who participate in SAE competition each year and they have won awards too, for flight also. Their name start or have aero in them. I vaguely recall it.

https://www.bvbkletechalumni.org/newsroom/news/KLE-Tech-SAE-India-Team-secures-First-Rank-in-Aero-Design-Challenge-2020--Southern-Section#

Sent from my motorola one power using Tapatalk

If you see the results, Indian teams are always in the thick of the winners!

https://www.saeaerodesign.com/page.aspx?pageid=c93ea933-b70e-4523-8cbc-276cc89a4211

A couple of years back I got the honor to meet Harshil mane in person and see him Fly at Amby Valley aerodrome.

He is member of Wings India club based in Mumbai. They mainly fly large gas models, extra 300s and turbine jets in Amby valley and Mahalaxmi race course.

Quote from: sanjayrai55 on November 09, 2020, 04:21:50 PM
If you see the results, Indian teams are always in the thick of the winners!

https://www.saeaerodesign.com/page.aspx?pageid=c93ea933-b70e-4523-8cbc-276cc89a4211

Sir,
The devil is in the detail!

I looked at the 2019 (regular class) results, and here's what I saw:
Overall rank, college, flight score as a percentage of winners flight score.

2019 West
5, MS Ramaiah Inst of Tech, 55/152 or 36%
9, NIT Jamshedpur, 15/152 or 10%
12, Dayanand Sagar College of Engg, 0%
26, Smt Kashibai Navale College of Engg, 0%
35, Acharya Inst of Tech, 0%

2019 East
4, Dwarkadas J Singhvi College of Engg, 9/45 or 20%
15, K.J.Somaiya College of Tech, 0%
21, Mukesh Patel School of Tech & Engg, 0%
27, Vellore Inst of Tech, 0%
29, Sahyadri College of Engg & Mgmt, 0%
31, Chandigarh Univ, 0%

Seems to support my hypothesis that:
Indian Teams are so good at paperwork that they can get into the winner's list (*) in Aero competitions, without even recording a flight!

Don't know whether to be glad or sad...

Edit
* Perhaps it's not even the winner's list, just a listof all participants!

I was actually the team lead of Team Quatlas MSRIT 2015-2016.

What i learned from my time in the team was these kind of projects require huge funds running in lakhs and getting these funds to fulfil the project isnt easy. So that year (2016-2017) we funded the entire projects from our pockets and managed to get some funds as sponsorship from external source , luckily we had few electronics thanks to our seniors from the pervious year. So we just needed to get the consumables like balsa, covering films etc.

Though the funds issue was solved, the major issue we faced was no one in the team had any skills whatsoever, i had just gotten into the hobby a year prior as a quadcopter pilot. So most of our work to design and develop the aircraft either came by guess works or just using thumb rules from the RC aerodynamic books. So after building the aircraft we were scared, like what if this plane doesnt fly or what if it just crashes.
we had build 2 planes and we were broke after that! Logistics is also a challenge to take such a big aircraft to and fro from the lab to the field.

Hence we never test flew the aircraft prior the competition. the first time she flew was at the competition and its was an intense moment for all of us including the safety pilot provided by the competition. Our bird was unstable as hell and the pilot was a god sent he got her down in one piece told us what to do to make it stable! Unfortunately that was the last time she flew, the aircraft got damaged during preparation for the next round and we couldnt fix it in time so we failed all the subsequent flight rounds.

So in short most of the Indian teams either lack facilities or resources to properly develop and test fly their creations. So that is why we work hard on the reports and presentations. to get the best score possible which improves the overall team position. I feel it is critical for old team members to share their experience with the new team members over the years this helps the team perform well. Thats how Quatlas managed to get Rank 5 in 2019 from 2 years of complete disastrous performance.

With his first hand experience, Mr Naveed has summarised the whole story beautifully.

The BITS Pilani Goa Campus close to my place with whom I have been interacting has an aerodynamics club and a seperate team working only for the SAE competition.
I don't know if they entered the 2019 contest. From what I have seen and spoken with the students there - there was one student who was a good RC pilot - after he passed out a few years ago they don't have a suitable replacement.
So while they may be very good in the theory and paperwork - they are handicapped in the practical flying part.