im crankin to finish up. one week left, one big lab report, a series of shop projects, and then submitting final portfolio for the past two years. got some stuff to do. been having a great time but damn is it busy. here are a couple things. first, my bike is fully built! it is beyond words. here is a quick shot, we'll be doing a proper shoot soon and posting the shots online.
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second, the most consuming thing ive been doing is building this uav for my smith class.
seminar engineering course, Aerial Vehicle Design, dopest professor, tons of funding and equipment, first 3/4 of course was lecture and lab based doing aerodynamics, aircraft design, wind tunnel testing, electronics, etc. we had two weeks to build! everything is from scratch. we assembled and programmed the flight board and ground station control. it receives commands from the ground, executes, transmits back flight speed, altitude, motor current, servo position, and then logs all the data. designed the airfoil (wing) and cut many iterations using a cnc foam cutter (funny machine). all other parts were laser cut and epoxied. and guess what, it flew! only one in the class to achieve sustained, controlled flight. i worked with two other students and we rocked it. soooo much fun! yesterday was the final presentation and we were expected to fly. we had just finished redesigning and building this new setup (two props, independent control for 'turning' (yaw)) and had never even done a flight test. worked first try :) im getting footage of the first flight from the school and unfortunately dont have a photo of the final model. we were at an indoor track and i crashed into a wall while attempting to avoid a massive net. shoulda hit the net. anyway we are rebuilding over the weekend and will be doing more tests. here are some shots of the build. (made of; foam wing reinforced with carbon, balsa wood vertical and horizontal stabilizers, carbon spine and crossbeam)
i miss you guys, want to have some fun with yall. keep making it happen, i hope all of you are happy where you are. cant wait to here about your experiences. post something up!!!!
--jake
-self portrait
