Busy times

With just two weeks to go until the competition, we're practicing as much as possible--not just the mission tasks, but also the engineering evaluation.  Below is a picture taken during practice earlier this week, with Tachyon Mk. III vertically breaching the water.

Tech report time....

For the last few weeks, we've been kept busy working on some of the non-technical parts of the competition, working on our tech report (worth 80 points out of the 500 available at internationals) and the poster (worth another 40).  We should be back in the water and working on Tachyon Mk. III this weekend, after keeping the ROV out of the water for most of the last month.

Pictures from Practice

Here's some pictures we've taken over the past few weeks showing Tachyon III in action (although these pictures are from practice, not the actual competition).  

Look at that pitch!!!

Run 2 highlights

Here's the best of our second run on Saturday (final score was 250/300).

Success!

The Florida Regional competition was held today at the YMCA Aquatic & Family Center, and Tachyon III placed first, with a best mission score of 250!  Pictures and video will be uploaded soon.  
We'll be moving on to internationals, which will be held in the same location in two months' time.  
Congratulations to the entire team, and thank you to all our sponsors!

Rice Nozzles

 A few months ago, we designed some nozzles based on the Rice profile to mazimize the thrust produced by our thrusters.  We finally got those nozzles printed (courtesy of Nikolai at the University of Alabama), and, although we haven't done any quantitative tests of them yet, they seem to have given Tachyon III a significant boost in power and performance.

Tachyon swims!

  On Wednesday, we had the opportunity to get Tachyon III some time in a full depth pool, and we were amazed by the handling capabilities of the robot.  We'd like to thank Trinity Prep Aquatics for giving us access to their pool to test our ROV.