(Week 2)Jumping to Week Two(Without a Parachute)

Week two has jumped into the record book and class progress is showing no signs of creating drag. The class is smoothing off the edges by streamlining managerial operations. Communication and organizational practice and policies are continually being improved for the future aspiration of flight activities. In the picture below, Dr. Hupy can be seen breaking in the new UAS computer lab during the second week of the semester.

New Classroom, New Lab. Dr. Hupy Breaking in the new UAS computer lab as students work at their stations.

This week accomplishments included: C-Astrals Bramor UAS parachute folding training, peer-2-peer file sharing architecture development for non-server based communication, and GIS ArcMap shape file and GPS demonstration.

Parachute training for the Bramor proved to be more demanding than originally anticipated. This UAV's recovery method is by Autonomous Parachute Landing. Therefore, every flight a new parachute must be refolded and installed so successful recovery of the system can happen. The entirety of available time was spent learning and practicing the techniques required to properly fold the parachute. The important takeaway being the time and effort it takes to learn the delicate and technical techniques of parachute packing. After 3 hours, the parachute training was not complete. More practice will be required prior to installation and live flight of the Bramor fixed wing UAS. Suffice it to say, more time practicing is needed before a training video or live flights can be conducted.

Data management is still proving to be the great white polar bear that takes more than a snow cap mountain of planing to stay on top of. Cold weather and delayed classes added to the desperation of accomplishing the amount of data management needed to give the rest of the class the warm and fuzzy prior to moving to the next step. Apart from creating sharing of data between classmates, their is the problem of data collection and distribution from mission and operations. Hopefully this will be address and a logical path be laid out in the upcoming weeks.