Paulo’s father was an engineer and Paulo started building airplanes at a young age. He is currently a professor at Cal Poly. When he graduated from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Brazil he planned to work for Embraer, but Prof. Claudio Barros gave him $1,500 and told him to stay and work on making the fastest piston airplane. He took the money and built the CEA-308 during his Master’s Program.

Here is a copy of the slides that were used in the presentaton.

You can view lots of Paulo’s videos on his YouTube channel.

He has also documented the Anequim project and even wrote a book about it.

Engineers need to learn how to handle risk and his philosphy is to teach by doing. You can’t teach if you didn’t do it first.

I do.
We do.
You do.

“As engineers, we know that something will fail. What will we do?”

Paulo is working with Cal Poly students to design and build the world’s fastest glider—Nixus. The wings are made with carbon fiber and the aspect ratio will be 53 with a 20' deflection at the wing tip. It will have a glide ratio of 70:1. The goal is to have a fly-by-wire system with multiple ailerons.

The fuselage was donated by one of the people who he worked with in Brazil.