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.

New Reading List Item

I think I'm going to order a new book titled "Spacecraft-Environment Interactions" by Daniel Hastings (not me) and Henry Garrett, professors at MIT. It's probably another one of those books I will grow into and refer to throughout college. I might not get much out of it at first, but this book caught my eye because it was written by someone who has my own name!

Diagram of Lowness

Here's a post from last September (I never got around to posting it):

"The other day I was thinking about outer space, how intriguing it is and such. I started to wonder how close I had ever come with one of my rockets to the edge of outer space. The results weren't the most exciting ever.


I figured that the highest flying rocket I have ever built and flown was my supersonic rocket, which supposedly reached an altitude of a little over 4,000 feet. That's about one tenth the ceiling of the troposphere, which is where the commercial jets fly, at about 5-7 miles high. The sad story is that the edge of space is 10 times that altitude, and satellites orbit yet 40-50 miles higher than that! So my altitude versus space's is a depressing ratio of about 1/150 (if I did my math right!).

That's gonna change."

1/23/09
My current project's full potential (High-5) should dash this record by at least 3,000 feet! Every year I'm getting closer and closer to the edge of outer space!"

Aerospace Engineering at STEP

I'm all excited, because this next semester I'm going to be taking aerospace engineering via Secondary Technical Education Program. I don't know much yet; all I know is that its major outcomes are:

• Introduction to aerodynamics design and testing.
• Flight systems and areospace materials.
• Space life sciences and astronautics.

And its instructional focus is on: experiments, project testing and field trips.

It sounds right up my alley, and is completely free (considered part of high-school education). I'll post more about it when I get more information.

Full Moon Over the Alps

The moon won't be this large for the rest of the year; it already reached perigee. Somebody was in the right place at the right time, and managed to catch a jet passing in front of this already awesome scene.