Made a mad dash to the airport 2 hours before flight time. Got through security with 10 minutes to spare before boarding call, only to find out we're at the wrong terminal. Luckily we made it just in time after running like maniacs. Looking forward to a long and pleasant flight with United and Alaska Airlines.
On another note, pretty sure we have now chased after all kinds of vehicles. Amateur rockets, you are next!
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We're just 48 hours away from leaving Houston now! Better start packing if you haven't!
Everyone heading to Alaska better check out the departing time and date on their plane tickets. Y'all would not want to scramble around on the d-day to figure it out, you know. Dr. Bering is leaving today to Fairbanks to meet with the UAF people who have kindly provided work space for the group to work on for this next two weeks. Sawan and Bryan will be leaving ahead tomorrow afternoon to make sure everyone is set up for lodging, transport, etc. Hey guys,
Thanks for coming to the Friday meeting and many thanks to everyone who helped out with the packing and inventory this week. We're now about, give or take, a week away from the Alaska campaign. The aim for this upcoming week is to make sure that everyone is set for the trip, especially with some of us leaving at different time and date. Check out the meeting recap listed below for more in detail points on what to expect and prepare for: Hey guys,
Thanks for coming to the dry run on yesterday (Friday, Feb. 23rd) and many thanks to George for setting it up! Hopefully everyone who participated had a feel on how the field operation will be like during the campaign. We will do another dry run once we have settled down at UAF's lab in Fairbanks. We're now two weeks away from our departure to AK, which means we will have to get as much things together as possible. The hard deadline to ship out equipment and items in large crates is Wednesday, Feb. 28th. By the way, Balloon and Helium from NASA will arrive on March 9th and March 12th, respectively. Check out the following for a more thorough recap of our discussion about the above. Hey guys,
We're now counting down to three weeks before the start of our campaign. Fortunately we got things going, especially with the wooden crates retrieved from Energy Research Parks' warehouse (many thanks to Elizabeth for that!) and travel requests being processed by the department. In the meantime, make claims for the issued winter gears (parkas, pants and boots) from 528 if you haven't done so. Most of us did it by the end of the meeting and we went with a "first come, first serve" basis. We went through the safety lecture today on how to protect yourself from the frigid weather at Alaska. Check out the following for more thorough discussion during the meeting. Happy Friday everyone,
Thank you to everyone who came to our weekly USIP meeting today. We're glad to have the following senior undergrads from College of Technology during the meeting. Abraham, Barton, Carlos, Jorge, and Sergio The above people have expressed interest in helping out teams that are shorthanded or are currently dormant. In this meeting, we covered the team updates and preparation for the upcoming campaign, which includes plans to test the equipments and generate checklists for shipment to Fairbanks Please see the following for more in-detail recap of our discussions: Hello all, Thanks for coming to our second weekly meeting. As brought up in the meeting, we will be prioritizing the testing of navigation equipment we currently have in lab. We need at least one person to take charge of that task. We also got in touch with College of Technology people who will be joining us this year for the scope of the project. We will repeat the safety lecture we had today with the newcomers once we establish contact info with them. Check out the "Read More" section for recap of things we discussed throughout the meeting, which includes: Travel Request updates, Status of shipments, and the Cold Weather Safety Lecture. Hello All,
Welcome back and thank you all for coming to the first meeting for USIP! Hopefully everyone made it out okay after last week's unusually cold weather. Speaking of cold weather, we're now just a few months away from our upcoming Alaska campaign on March. There's lot of things to do and as usual, not seemingly enough time to do them. But we're going to change that, albeit minimally, during this meeting which covers the status of purchases, travel logistics and team updates. To recap our discussions: The students in this project are always working hard. This group consists of undergraduates majoring in Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Petroleum Engineering, Biochemical and Biophysical Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, or Mathematics. (We’ve already had enough team-building events to bridge the inter-disciplinary gaps, don’t worry.)
Obviously, this group of students must find a way to juggle their respective course loads and commit intensive time to research. Being a USIP II member incurs several weekly requirements: 1. Students dedicate AT LEAST nine hours of research time each week. (This means nine hours of sitting in the physics laboratory doing research before, in-between, and after classes.) But let’s not kid ourselves: we’re all spending way more than nine hours in the lab now. This is our full-time job. 2. Students attend a group meeting every Friday afternoon from 5:00 to 7:00 PM, where they sit around in a large, familial circle and share progress-updates, weekly announcements, and plans for future improvement (see bottom of the page for a picture). 3. Students juggle additional USIP II responsibilities. Some of us organize team-building events, some of us coordinate with professors from around the U.S. to come in and give special lectures, some of us help students flying in the April launches prepare their payloads, and some of the very best of us run blogs! We’ve even helped Dr. Talbot at the University attach and fly a balloon-tethered radiosonde already. 4. Students attend sophisticated dinner parties thrown by our commander-in-chief, Dr. Edgar Bering. This means that we lowly USIP II students are actually leaving the lab every now and then to go rub elbows with the best and the brightest in the nation. Obviously, being a USIP II student is tough and the responsibilities are endless. But don’t feel bad for us! This is exactly what we were expecting and is definitely what some of us were wanting. So while we’re jumping hoops and trying to keep all of our balls in the air, we’re having a grand old time, honestly. See the photo of George and Michel at the bottom of this page if you don’t believe me. editor: Jamie Lehnen Note: This is the second USIP project to take place at the University of Houston, so we affectionately refer to ourselves as USIP II. To see work done by the first USIP group, please visit their separate blog at: http://usip-uh.blogspot.com/
This Undergraduate Student Instrument Project (USIP) is a student-led effort at the University of Houston to improve ultralight balloon technology for auroral and stratospheric studies. With recent advances in consumer electronic technology, students will attempt to create new instrumentation to be launched into the auroral stratosphere and ionosphere layers of the atmosphere using payloads weighing less than six pounds and costing less than $3,000 each. A group of 24 students will build between 6 to 10 payloads, through which they will study topics such as air glow, auroral spectroscopy, and bacterial sampling of the upper atmosphere. This is a student-led project, meaning that students decide on their own team leaders, arrange their own team meetings, and conduct their own research. (No relevant article or publication will be left unscathed.) WARNING Side effects of following this blog might include: -Sympathetic exhaustion -Frequent bouts of confusion -Excessive exposure to circuit design and code languages Read only as recommended. |
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