After three long and hectic days of compiling and organizing our PDR, everyone on our team took a huge sigh of relief when we finally submitted it to CULearn. Nearly immediately afterwards, we jumped right back on the bandwagon, selected our presenters (which mostly ended up being our PM, system's engineer, and the leads of each subsystem), and started practicing. We were pretty rough to start out with, but after many hours of carefully choosing words and trying to remember important tidbits of data, we felt confident in our not only our speaking skills, but our presentation as well. As Thursday crept closer, we all started to feel the heat of deadlines again. Thankfully, SUAV was kind enough to watch and critique our presentation after we watched and critiqued theirs. As for the presentation itself, the entire MADS team feels extremely confident and proud of our work, and we're extremely pleased with the response we recieved from the PAB. Next stop, CDR!

Posted by Michael Gordon

This week MADS worked on system and sub-system development for PDR (BOTE calculations, mass and cost estimates, etc.); whittling down all ideas into primary and off-ramp choices. The primary vehicle has been examined in order to create models and determine where the most structurally stable place on the aircraft to modify for the deployment mechanism. The sub-vehicle along with two off ramps were chosen and preliminary aerodynamic calculations were made with what information the team has. The team has several ideas for the deployment mechanism and strut and have been evaluating how these will effect the wing and integrate with the sub-vehicle configurations. These configurations have been evaluated in AVL and PowerFLOW for stability and aerodynamic characteristics. Through these models we are confident that the chosen configuration for the overall system design will fly. Currently PDR is being compiled.

Posted by Leah Crumbaker