Welcome back to week four of my blog! This week, by far, has been the most productive of them all.
Ben Loh (red shirt) and the high school team gazing at our beautiful machine.
Up to this point, we have been practicing effective methods of producing the wings. From stage one where we mark and cut the baffles and the rectangular piece for the wing, all the way to heat sealing and putting it together, we have improved immensely. Ben Loh, the head of the inflatable wing idea at the USRI, gave us new fabric to be able to construct the wings. Although I’m not sure of the name, this material is noticeably sturdier than the Oxford fabric and so far has resisted leaking infinitely better than our original wings. On Monday, we obtained the fabric and began producing the final design. On that same day, the USRI set up a laser cutter/engraver that has saved us the tedious and painstaking hours of cutting everything by hand. Due to this laser we can now produce full sets of baffles within 5 minutes. We love it.
Ben Loh lining up our wing onto the fixed-wing vehicle.
At the beginning of the week, they gave us a deadline – have a full wing done and ready to fly by the end of Friday. Deadlines are a very beautiful thing because by the given time, we created a foam board middle section and two different 21 inch wings. We used Flex Seal on the wing to secure any leaks, dried it, taped it onto the middle section and this is the final result. On Monday, if the weather allows, we’ll be flying her at an airfield that we use miles outside of town. We still have to place control systems onto the plane to be able to manipulate the air flow and maneuver the vehicle. If everything goes to plan, we’ll have a fully functional flying inflatable wing aircraft by the end of Monday!
Oklahoma State University’s 11 foot rocket being prepped.
This week’s post actually went up a day late, I typically upload every Saturday. I’m sure all my viewers were worried sick. No worries! Dr. Jamey Jacob invited the high school students to watch rockets launch in a field near Argonia, Kansas. Dr. Jacob, Meghana, Alex, and I drove two hours from Stillwater and got to see an 11 foot, 100 pound rocket launch. The FAA gave permission of heights up to 40 thousand feet if that gives any idea of how high they went. It was amazing to be able to watch rockets launch for the first time, very big thanks to Dr. Jacob for allowing us to tag along!
In my free time, I continue to go to the YMCA and workout. Things are actually coming along very well! Every day after work, I workout for an hour and then I play basketball. But this week, while going out to Hobby Lobby to buy foam glue, we all picked up 3-D sheet metal models of various objects. Some people got the Apollo Saturn V model (it is it’s 50th anniversary this month), other’s got German aircraft, and I got a scorpion model. It’s really challenging but fun to be able to craft these models. It keeps me busy!
My progress so far on my scorpion. It’s harder than it looks.
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