Host dedicated 1h+ meetings with the avionics team 2-3 times per week covering general update meetings, weekly worksessions, and dedicated testing/assembly campaigns. That's in addition to the admin/inter-lead meetings that also happen 1-2 times per week, plus the weekend propulsion worksessions where we do engine tests and I support the avionics aspect.

Avionics has not been this big or complex on UTAT Rocketry, ever before. Last year before I joined, I was told they made 2-3 small PCBs to support the simpler solid rocket and hybrid rocket projects. Most components were purchased off-the-shelf, and the few PCBs they did make were limited in scope, not using standardized components, and not well documented. Stepping into the lead position I focused heavily on not only building up the team's skills, but also making frameworks, standards, and detailed documentation on the current system so future leads and members can easily pick up where I left off and continue development rather than spending months trying to figure out what we did, or worse giving up and starting over. Some high level goals I enforce are:

• Design reviews are always a team-wide activity, I go over my thoughts on the board primarily as the lead, but everyone has the opportunity to share feedback or ideas as well. This keeps the team engaged, and lets people learn passively from projects they aren't directly involved in.
• Standardized shared Altium parts library with defined processes for adding new parts, including a team-wide common set of footprints/symbols for passives (0603 resistors all have the same one, for example). Enforcing consistency in this way makes it easy to read schematics, have confidence from a DFM perspective, and reduces effort for designers thanks to reuse.
• Common schematic and PCB rules template for all new projects to further aid standardization and ease of design, make it harder for mistakes to get past review through DRC rules.
• Complex boards require a system diagram in draw.io before serious design takes place. This makes it easy to review the "idea" of the board before rigorously selecting parts, and later serves as pre-made documentation for design reports and internal resources.

In support of the new influx of members at the beginning of the school year, I hosted multiple workshops to get students up to speed within our highly technical team. For onboarding alone I hosted the hardware section of our Introduction to Avionics kickoff (my co-lead William G. hosted the firmware section). I presented the following to 30+ new members:

After the kickoff, William hosted the firmware lectures, while I hosted hardware. First I created and presented "Hardware Lecture 1: Intro to Digital Electronics". I recorded the full lecture and posted it on YouTube, as linked below:

Then, I hosted a complete Intro to Altium Designer tutorial making an LED project PCB. After the session, I recorded a dedicated video for those who missed it and posted it on my YouTube channel:

Finally, I hosted an in-person-only hands-on workshop where I showed people how to design their own mini rocket flight computers using an STM32F4, IMU sensor, and USB interface. It was based on the part choices in my STM32F4 test board which is pictured below.

To support continuity of knowledge, faster onboarding, and a centralized source of truth for system interfaces, I solo-developed the Flight Avionics System (FAS) System Design Description (SDD) before the new influx of students. The SDD is a living document with 38 pages currently, and it describes all aspects of the (flight) avionics, how they interface with each other, and importantly how they interface with the other rocket systems (recovery, propulsion, airframe). The SDD content is semi-proprietary within the team, so I will not share the full document here, but a screenshot of all pages in a grid layout gives an idea of the content and structure:

Team Development

I have represented the team at multiple events including:

• UTAT Rocketry Showcase, 2024
• UTAT Rocketry Showcase, 2025
• Engineering Clubs Fair, 2025
• Computer Science Clubs Fair, 2025

I brought a demo of our ADC driver (written by William G.) to our Showcase events, using my personal function generator I draw the text "UTAT" with voltage, and use our custom ADC board and custom driver with an STM32-NUCLEO to send those voltage to a computer. The values are then plotted on a voltage-time graph to reveal the text, it usually catches the eye of ECE students.

During these events I focused on demonstrating our systems, explaining our approaches to design, and inspiring new students about engineering (in general), and joining our team. I also spoke with sponsors including a representative from RLX Solutions.

After sharing our mission and design plan for this coming year, the representative from RLX was so impressed that he offered to sponsor the fabrication of all our PCBs for the new rocket - a huge win for our team. Many thanks to RLX for their continued support of our advanced projects.

In addition to design and leadership, I spearhead bench testing, thermal/electrical validation, and firmware integration including writing firmware myself.

This testing includes:

• Switching converter (Buck, Boost) stability, and electrical performance
• Thermal testing of power systems
• Hardware edge-case testing including under voltage, over voltage, short-circuit load
• Analog measurement testing and debugging such as current monitoring, voltage monitoring, and pressure transducer readings
• Debugging design errors at a hardware-level, implementing temporary fixes so firmware development can continue (fly-wires, desoldering components, scraping traces, etc)
• Patch antenna RF performance evaluation including scattering parameters, and radiation efficiency when placed on nonconventional surfaces such as carbon fiber
• Mechanical fit into the airframe, internal tolerancing, clearances for components

I used the following tools often:

• Oscilloscope (4 channel, 0-100MHz personal most often, and 2 channel 0-100Mhz team-shared sometimes)
• Multimeter
• FLIR thermal imaging camera
• Programmable power supply
• Function generator (2 channel, 0-60MHz personal)
• Vector Network Analyzer (0-3GHz personal)
• Spectrum Analyzer (0-8GHz personal)

To support testing of high power electronics (100W+) I built my own adjustable load with ceramic resistors, a heat-sink, and manual machining for better thermal contact and rigid mounting. The load bank can support hundreds of watts continuously without overheating (with proper airflow), and was solo-built by me.

I also performed numerous broader system-level/integration testing activities. Two highlights include evaluating patch antenna performance when mounted to a conductive material structure (carbon fiber tube), and testing the maximum data exchange rate between two STM32s over UART under specific constraints applicable to our Synapse node-based ground station project. Below are screenshots of the testing results.

In conclusion, UTAT has given, and continues to give me broad exposure to developing and testing all aspects of embedded systems from hardware to firmware design and testing.