A Trip to the Grand Canyon

I'm taking a brief hiatus from my vigorous studies. Over spring break my family is going to drive all the way to the Grand Canyon! I've got many hours to kill on the road, so this is my opportunity to make designs for spring! When I come back (on the 4th), I'll probably have a few things to blog about.

My transmitting camera and receiver arrived yesterday! I didn't get to try it out yet, before we leave on our trip, but I'm really excited to use it (as you can imagine). It can be mounted just about anywhere, on my helicopter or in a rocket, and it has a range of almost a mile straight in the air! (~1,000 feet along the ground). I purchased the high-power external antenna, because I need it to receive the video from those altitudes.

Update on Aerospace Engineering

You haven't heard from me in a while because of my busy schedule. I'm taking a strategic step forward with this aerospace engineering class, and I wanted to write a brief summary of how that's been going.

Before this point, much of my self-directed study has been on rocketry. This class has exposed me to a whole other facet of aerospace, namely aeronautical engineering. The structure of this class is right up my alley. It's only a class of 7 students! The teacher doesn't do a whole lot of lecturing. Instead, he lets us do our own research, and then present our results to the entire class.

Later on, we will be using what we learned about aerodynamics to actually design and build a small model glider in the adjacent workshop. I'm looking forward to that, because I learn best in hands-on activities as such.

I will be writing another post very soon, because I just recently ordered a 2.4 GHz micro transmitting camera, and will be building a rocket for it soon to fly in the spring! So stay tuned.

Radio Control

I've just recently gotten into radio control (after years of wanting too) with this Eagle Eye helicopter. It's already been a great learning experience, so using my infant knowledge of RC, I'm planning on tackling yet another ambitious project... but more on that later. I won't be able to do much flying of anything until spring.

This helicopter was designed to carry a small micro-transmitting video camera, which is giving me all the more insentive to purchase that Booster Vision GearCam. And, using my 72 MHz transmitter, I'm toying with the idea of rigging a system for being able to manipulate and aim the camera from the ground.

But nothing is going to happen yet, because I am on a new schedule. I recently started to go to public school full time, and while this is excellent preparation for college (especially since all my classes are honors classes), I have no more time for tinkering and rocket-building.

Selah.