Hello again! This is my second week here at Oklahoma State University – and it was just as great as the last.
Floating Yellow Heart in Lake Carl Blackwell
To kick it off, on Monday we went over to Lake Carl Blackwell and did our weekly inspection of the lake. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you may be interested in reading about my first week here in Oklahoma! When flying UAVs, there is a requirement of having one certified Pilot in Command for every UAV that is being flown. Only then can students like I take control with supervision. Typically on our LCB Missions, we fly two drones with two PIC’s but this week we only had one so we had to double the time.
Baffles within the wing and a valve to insert air.
The following days we continued to work on improving our inflatable wings. To be able to construct one, a long measured rectangular piece of oxford fabric is required and then smaller rectangular shaped pieces serve as baffles. These baffles are what give a wing it’s shape. After successfully heat sealing everything for the interior, a hole is punched where a valve is inserted to be able to inflate the inflatable wing. Although it sounds simple enough, there are many factors that contribute to error. For example, it’s very easy to misalign the one meter rulers and cut in a different not-straight path.
A handsome man cutting heat sealable oxford fabric for inflatable wings.
Aside from all the work going on within the lab, we are also preparing to attend a symposium dedicated to CloudMap. CloudMap is a collaborative team with a mission to integrate unmanned aerial systems that could be able to map and record atmospherical and meteorological data. This collaboration consists of four university partners. Oklahoma State University, University of Kentucky, University of Nebraska, and the University of Oklahoma. The CloudMap team has also partnered with various government agencies such as the NOAA, the National Severe Storms Laboratory, the National Weather Service, and more. Such a wide variety of research is being done and behind almost everything is Dr. Jamey Jacob. I’m very honored to be working under such an influential person. At the symposium, taking place on July 8-10 at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma, our high school student group will present two posters that we created. These posters demonstrate the work we have been doing, one of Lake Carl Blackwell and the other of the fixed-wing plane we will be using and how it will be carrying an instrument called a radiosonde. You might be wondering what a radiosonde is exactly, and I’d be more than happy to explain next week when we present all of our information – so stay tuned!
This week happened to contain a little known holiday called Independence Day on the 4th of July! Because of this, our week was cut short a couple days. On Thursday, the city of Stillwater had a firework show over at a park/lake called Boomer Lake Park. The fireworks were incredibly big and definitely something I will remember for a long while.
Firework show finale at Boomer Lake Park.
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