The Rare Phenomenon known as Thunder Snow

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Jeffery

I was visiting a friend in Flagstaff, AZ this weekend at NAU (Northern Arizona University) (Flagstaff is an hour and a half north of Prescott) and we were working on homework Sunday night when all of a sudden we heard a loud BOOM! For a second we were both incredibly confused seeing that there wasn’t any chance of a Thunderstorm in the forecast for Northern Arizona and it wasn’t even raining outside in fact it was snowing! Image result for NAU snow

We ran to the door of the apartment to peak outside to see other NAU students anxiously looking out into the dark cold cloudy skies of Northern Arizona wondering if we weren’t all losing our minds. A few seconds later that’s when I realized what was actually taking place. I noticed off in the distance a series of lightning strikes flashing around the San Francisco Peaks followed by a mild rumble of steady thunder filling the silence of a quiet cold windy Sunday night — Thunder Snow!.

I have a passion for weather. Being a pilot, it’s something I’ve learned to check periodically throughout my day so being able to witness the very rare phenomenon known as Thunder Snow had to probably be one of the most rewarding experience I have been able to witness while living here in Northern Arizona! 635898787435863929-lightning-strike2-ThinkstockPhotos-469850273

The definition of Thunder Snow is an unusual kind of thunderstorm with snow falling as the primary precipitation instead of rain and occurs in regions where a strong upward motion is present within the cold sector of an extratropical cyclone (Wikipedia). This is one of the many reasons I adore the state of Arizona because you have a front row seat to some of the most amazing and most unique weather events that you may not have the luxury of experiencing in any other states in the United States. All you have to do is step outside and look up!

Engineering Detail Design Course – Hard Work and Very Rewarding

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Cherie

A major part of your student career at Embry-Riddle is the capstone course. For engineers the capstone course is comprised of two semesters/courses known as Preliminary and Detail Design. As a student in my freshman year I knew nothing about these two courses and towards the end of my junior year I began hearing quite abit about them. I wish I had known what the two courses entailed much earlier as I would have definitely restructured my game plan as far as fundamental courses go.

Team Daedalus on the last day of the Preliminary Design Course

The Preliminary Design course essentially forces you to use all of the resources you have learned in the past three years at college. You will work crazy hours, get frustrated but you will fall in love with what you are doing. The course teaches you how to be a leader and a member of a team, how to face problems and fix them, but, most important it teaches pride in your work. At the end of the semester you should have an outstanding product and an increased knowledge of professional engineering.

When you move into the Detail Design course you are verifying the information that you presented at the conclusion of the Preliminary Design semester. There are many options to verify assertions. The primary one is wind tunnel testing but, often students choose to fabricate a working prototype of their concept in order to prove that it works. No matter what your team chooses to do the process is extremely rewarding as you get to see how your intuition created a viable product.

I would highly recommend that every student entering these courses attempts to be a program manager or design team lead. As a PM or DTL you are the face of the team, responsible for the schedule, budget, and work produced by the team. I have been a PM for the last two semesters and although it has been very hard it has been extremely rewarding. For those ladies out there, don’t be intimidated, you are just as qualified to lead a team as any other member in your class. In my section of Preliminary and Detail Design I am the only female and I am one of two Program Managers. As long as you are a good manager you will do well but, don’t worry mistakes happen. No one is born a perfect manager and it takes alot of mistakes to figure out your management style. Just hang in there, do good work, take care of your people, and admit when you make a mistake. That’s really all it takes 🙂

I hope this information is helpful to our incoming students as well as our up and coming leaders in the Capstone courses! Thanks for reading!

John Marbut: Mapping the Ecuadorian Rainforest with UAS in Study Abroad

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Adventures

John Marbut is a guest blogger on a study abroad program through UAS7 which is a full-year, full tuition program in Germany. In the fall students take classes at the University of Applied Sciences and in the spring participate in an internship in a lab or institution with hands on work on a project.

Starting from the left in the lower row its: Severin Mainz, Niclas Purger, Benjamin Bachmeier. The second row from the left is myself, I don’t know the name of the two tribe members, then Mascha Kauka, Domingo (President of Shartamensa), Dr. Siebold, and Dr. Krzystek. In the last row is Fabian Braun, Christoph Oberndorfer, and Jonas Wilhelm.

I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to join a research team and senior thesis project at the Munich University of Applied Sciences, the major focus for the project was mapping the Ecuadorian rainforest. The group was actually invited to do the mapping through their partnership with Amazonica who works with the tribes to help improve their quality of life by improving education and providing medical supplies. The planned project required us to modify the UAV/Drone (it can fly autonomously or via remote control) from the last AUVSI competition. We needed to be able to get high resolution photos of the rainforest in order to be able to generate a 3-D map of the area we flew over, so the team installed a new payload containing more batteries, room for the camera, and an infrared trigger to start the camera. The antenna used to update the information about the drone’s had a range of about 5 miles, however the autopilot could fly without making contact with the homebase and the drone had a maximum flight time of just over an hour. The picture above is from our last flight in Shartamensa, home to some of the Achuar tribe.

We left for Ecuador in early November, leaving early in the morning we took a fifteen hour flight from Munich to Quito where we met with our guide Mascha Kauka.

Shartamensa

After another day of traveling we finally made it to Shartamensa. We had chosen November because it is the dry season for the region that we were mapping. We were able to use the village’s empty hospital as a staging area for the assembly, it took a day to get everything setup. The second day in Shartamensa we started to doing test flights, we found that after about 2pm the rainstorms roll in which makes flying impossible. The third day I joined the Geoinformatics team on a trek into the rainforest to the big tree which stood at about 60 meters tall. We pushed through a swamp and had to hack through the underbrush to get there but the tree was absolutely incredible to see. The tree was about the size of a car and towered well above the normal canopy. The Geoinformatics laid out a gps points that made the mapping for the area accurate down to a few inches. We managed to get back to the village just before sun down and prepped for our second trip the following day.

Image by Christoph Oberndorfer, a student at Hochschule München

On the second day of exploration we left quite a bit earlier and so we actually had lunch at a temporary camp that was set up just off the river. The flights went really well, we only had a couple of hard landings but the damage wasn’t too bad. The stay was actually incredible pleasant, we got to see a lot of the Achuar culture, including a lunch on the river, demonstration of their formal greetings, and we got to try a lot of local food. Some of the more unique food and drink was cauim (a traditional type of beer) and roasted grubs. We got to take a trip to a sacred waterfall which is visited anytime the village is struggling. They believe that washing your hands in the waterfall can cleanse your soul. On our last day we spent time with some of the locals playing volleyball and soccer and participated in a cultural exchange between the team and the village. After the week in the Amazon half of the team returned to Pujo while the second half remained in the Amazon to track down the aircraft after a failure occurred in the autopilot causing the UAV to go down 2 kilometers into the rainforest. Those of us who went back stayed in a city called Baños which is well known for its volcanic hot springs. We spent a day in Baños and waited for the other half of the group to join us before heading to the hot springs. We actually got the opportunity to see a small eruption as we headed away from Baños. We wrapped up the trip with a few days in Quito checking out the Equator, the Equator park, the crater, and the Basilica. The city was beautiful and I would love to go back. My understanding is that team might be going back map the Galapagos, and I encourage anyone who is going to Munich next year to try and join the team.

-John Marbut