Hello everyone,
Today was mainly our flight preparation day. We passed through the safety inspection very cleanly and without any trouble. Due to our brilliant flight time slot chosen by our amazing duo co-presidents, we knew that there was little chance of us getting sent to fly today. This gave us the chance to perfect our preparations. We were able to assemble and inspect our airframe and test our systems while we were at the field.
The issues we encountered were few in number. The slimmed down travel crate for the plane not only had a smaller frame, but it also brought along with it less damage, where the biggest problem was a slightly bent rudder edge and a nut that came loose.
In terms of the airframe software, we were thrown for a loop when the waypoints for the interop server were actually located at the firehouse where the briefing was held. We were expecting them to be at the field where we were to be flying so you can imagine how this sent us into a stall. We also had to do some bug extermination, and we dont’t mean the ones in the field(It was actually very well kept).
The weather has been amazing these last few days, not very hot and not very cool(just like our airframe team, Ooooooo), so it looks like we have a good chance of flying in nice weather tommorow.
Despite the great weather, we (being the engineers we are) decided to leave the field early since we knew we weren’t flying today and instead retreated to the cold air conditioned safety of our wifi connected hotel room.
We just finished our team flight briefing, completely laying out our game plan and team task delegations. With that we are done with the main preparations for our flight tommorow.
To give you an idea of tomorrow’s events, here’s the scenario:
A lone hiker, daring to challenge the forces of nature, has wandered too far into the wilderness for his own good. Lost and hungry, he wanders aimlessly through the woods seeking signs of civilization and awaiting rescue. Jownsey must soar through the skies following the tracks of the lost hiker and stalk the Webster Fields to rescue him.
The rules of the mission demonstration are simple, every team is given 20 minutes to setup, were the last 5 minutes must be used to brief the judges of the mission plan. Once the airspace is cleared of any other teams, and the 20 minutes of suspenseful setup has passed, the mission will begin! Points will be given to us based on the reliability of Jownsey’s autonomous flight, its ability to avoid obstacles, and object detection capabilities.
Will Jownsey successfully rescue the lost hiker? Stay tuned for more updates!
Dat and Jackie