Science Results : Daily Update

Daily Update | Current SEA Research

June 26, 2010

By Giora Proskurowski

Saturday on an SEA boat is like any other day on an SEA boat, but to make it feel more like the weekend we like to say it is "a day with marginally less work". However, today we actually did a little less work, one less science station than normal – three instead of four. This afternoon we spent several hours hove to (the ship was stopped) to celebrate Dylan Meyer's birthday, to unsuccessfully attempt to fly a radio-controlled airplane, and to hold a photo shoot of Cramer under sail.

Because we covered no miles from 1300-1600 we skipped the afternoon station and bumped the evening station forward to 2000, in order to keep our stations approximately evenly spaced. Despite the afternoon off, this morning's station was a flurry of activity: a CTD, followed by a neuston tow, followed by two Tucker trawls sampling at four meters and twelve meters water depth.

The last couple of days have been fairly light in terms of our plastic haul, and today was no different. The Tucker trawls were empty of plastic, a first for me, as every other subsurface tow I've done looking for plastics 5-10 meters deep has contained plastic fragments. Strange results were everywhere today, including my attempt at flying a radio-controlled aircraft.

In collaboration with Archimedes Aerospace in Montpelier, Vermont, SEA is in the early stages of developing an unmanned aerial vehicle as a platform for imaging the surface ocean. Before boarding the Cramer in Bermuda, I went from knowing nothing about RC aircraft to being a novice flyer. The hope was that I could launch and recover a "flying wing" aircraft from the deck of our ship. This is much harder than it sounds, and there are specific considerations for launching off the Cramer that we are learning the hard way.

The aircraft is a small electric (1350mA, 11.1V Lithium polymer 3 cell battery) single-wing aircraft, with a propeller mounted in the rear as a "pusher". My first attempt at flying off a boat ended after about four seconds of flight – after launch the plane dove towards the ocean in a hard left turn, and despite a brief recovery, I couldn't keep it out of the water.

After dousing the plane with fresh water, drying out all the components, cleaning and remaking all the connections, I went for a second attempt. This flight lasted less than a second, as the plane dove out of Sully's hand and straight to the water. Certainly my flight skills could be better to deal with the challenging turbulent wind conditions surrounding the boat (which I think contributed to the sudden dives of the aircraft after launching).

The aircraft is in serviceable condition, and another round will happen soon. Next time we'll launch when winds are lighter and more at my level, to test this aircraft's ability to image floating debris from an altitude of 50 to 100 feet.