Being in your third year, you should have a good concept of flight and powers systems. Your instructor is forcing you to think out of the box and build with what you have learned.

Kinda like Junkyard Wars for college students.

I know students from Texas A&M and Embery Riddle who have participated in a yearly event like the one you are doing. I'm trying to remember who to contact since it's been a few years since I was in contact with this event. Did you check the AMA website for contacts to Universities?

I had to do a project like this, but involving a rocket capable of carrying a satellite. It had to go to a determined altitude, deploy, and the satellite had to take telemetric measurements and transmit them back to our base. None of us knew nothing about satellites and this was way beyond what Estes made and only had one semester to do it in. We did it.

Check the design forum for CAD software. There hes been some great links there for free software for designing airfoils. Be sure to ask any specific questions in that forum, it's been a great forum for me.

Many of our designs started on scratch paper, then modeled using, at that time, ProModeler. Your team should be diversified, who has the mechanical background? Who is good with electronics? Who is good at video games (since somebody has to fly it)? Who is good at drawing plans? Who has contacts with modelers? Get together, grab some pizzas, and brainstorm.

Welcome to the field of engineering. Don't let the nay sayers get to you. I am working a project design at work that I have never done before and they want it done yesterday, work flawlessly, and be under budget.