Rough Times at Rose

Recently, there have been three separate car accidents involving four Rose-Hulman students, and two of those students have died (one had just graduated last November). The other two are seriously injured and are in hospitals recovering, both with head injuries as well as other injuries. Two of the students were on the football team and two were on the swimming team. It's been a shock, considering that I don't remember anything like this happening in all four years at Rose, and now in a span of seven weeks, four Rose kids have been in accidents. Although I was not close to any of the students involved in the accidents, many of my friends were and are having a tough time right now. Buses from Rose will be attending the funerals, taking any students who want to go. One of the funerals is in Indiana, and the other is in Texas.

Well, if you read the last post you know we had a not-so-successful first flight attempt in the old version of our DBF plane. We re-analyzed the plane and found that the tail setting angle, which had been calculated at 4 degrees, was built in the wrong direction. Basically, the tail was set 8 degrees off. This really affected the flight capabilities, allowing for take-off but not providing the moment needed to pull the nose down once the aircraft left the ground. Also, the plane was modeled in a simulator and, although it would now takeoff and fly in its unloaded configuration, it would not in the loaded configuration. So we made a change: biplane. Also, the area of the nose was so big that it reduced the effective area of the propeller quite a bit, so we made a change there as well. You can see the differences in tail setting angle, surface area of the nose, and added wing in the photo below:

The colorful tail and wing are not covered yet. Our second flight test will (hopefully) be tomorrow.

Job update: the company that I was excited about that I interviewed with over break will probably not be giving me a job offer since they decided to give an offer to another candidate first. I'm upset about it because it feels like discrimination. They asked me how long T would be stationed in the area, and their response to my answer was the only negative aspect of the whole interview. I'm currenlty looking at other opportunities. On the positive side, we found a house we want to rent and we are looking into applying for it.