| Wrap-up notes by the Stockbridge ROV team: impressions and journal entries Submitted 13 April 2012 What was it like traveling to Palau? Jenny Spink — I was really nervous to fly to Palau, as it was my first time being out of the country. The flight was super long and I had a hard time sleeping, but it was well worth the time spent in Palau. It felt great to step out of the Palau Airport because I think we all suddenly realized we actually made it to Palau.
Brianna Baldridge — Traveling to Palau was a whole new experience for me because I had never been outside of the United States until then. Traveling about 19 hours on a plane wasn’t the best experience, but it was well worth it. When arriving at the Palau airport, the idea that we were actually there and made it finally settled in for most of the students; therefore, everyone started getting excited. The trip was a huge success for everyone and the experience to Palau is a trip that I will never forget.
Taylor Parks — Traveling to Palau was something I will never forget. It was my first time riding in an airplane and I didn’t know what to expect. The first plane ride was 13 hours and the second was 5. At first I was doing good. I wasn’t scared and I was getting a little sleep here and there. After dinner came and I ate, that’s when things started to go down hill. My stomach hurt and I had a hard time falling asleep again. The last 5 hours of the first plane and the total 5 hours on the second were one of the worst experiences I have had to deal with. The rides back were a different story. I never got sick because I didn’t eat the plane food. Instead I brought my own and I never got sick.
What was your most memorable thing about the trip? Taylor Parks — I will remember the people. Everyone there was so nice and always happy. Everyday we would meet new people who were very interested in what we have done. Also there wasn’t one person who never said hi. Strangers walking down the street to random drivers honking and waving at us. I will also remember the students at the public high school. They too, were very nice. They all were easy to talk to and made us feel like we were one of them.
Wesley Havens — The thing I remember most and enjoyed most were just the people how nice they were! Everyone seemed to have an interesting story and always wanted to talk even if they were just walking the MiniMart. While I was there I made dozens of friends and got invited to breakfast and a drum lesson.
Buck Poszywak — The most memorable part of my trip to Palau was visiting Mindszenty High School. I was so surprised how related we were to other high school students across the world. They learned from the same math books as us! They also play the same sports. One of the seniors there holds the gold medal from a wrestling tournament in Australia! I was glad I was on his good side. Everyone there was so nice to us and to each other. They all had their little clicks like us, but they still hung out all together and were very nice to one another. It didn’t seem like anyone was discluded at all for anything.
Cody Chadwick— The thing I remember the most is the people. In Palau all the people were really nice, and they would hold entire conversation with us about the most random things. Plus it seemed that everyone had some sort of interesting story. Wesley and myself made friends with a guy named Paul O’Keefe. He was really interested in what we were doing and eventually we ate diner/breakfast with him 5 times.
What did you learn about yourself on this trip? Brianna Baldridge — While being in Palau, I learned that I am a very interactive person with other, even more so with other students. Being in Michigan, Stockbridge especially, has limited me to interacting with new people because I already know everyone from Stockbridge, but when I got the opportunity to meet new people who were from a different environment, I quickly jumped on it and made the best experience for myself. I hope to continue to interact with new people as I gain the knowledge to understand others.
Cody Chadwick — I feel that the trip was a major success. We traveled half way around the world and imaged a few planes; therefore, we accomplished our mission. Plus we had a lot of fun and met a lot of people!
If I could do it again, would I? (What would I do differently?) Buck Poszywak — Yes I would! And I’m going to! We had a lot of problems and mistakes that I really want to make right. This was a great experience that really showed me that you can’t be too prepared. Next year we are going to need to pack quite a bit more tools and supplies that we lacked this year. Also, we need more checklists. Unfortunately, this year we waited until the last workday to do anything about our old checklists. We learned a lot from this experience and next year will be ten times as successful!
Scott Watson — If I had the chance to have the experiences that I had again, I would definitely do it. There were so many new and exciting experiences combined within those two weeks that I’ll probably never get the chance to do again in my lifetime, whether it was seeing hundreds of World War II artifacts, or watching our robot working and capturing video at a hundred and twenty-five feet below the surface.
Jenny Spink — Yes, I would do it again. It was awesome to do a real life “school project. It had real results. We were able to build a ROV, raise enough money and fly to the other side of the world and help in the search of the missing who helped earn our freedom. So, yes, I will do this again.
Do you feel the trip was a success? Wesley Havens — I feel that the trip was super successful because not only did we image a plane and operate our robot at120 feet, but we also experienced new foods and people. While we were there we also had to work as a team and I feel we did that amazingly well whether it was on the boat or fixing up our robot in the hotel lobby.
How do you feel this experience will help you in the future? Scott Watson — Out of the many lessons learned from the trip’s experiences I believe the most prominent was simply to talk to, and get to know people. We were all taught as children to not talk to strangers for obvious reasons, but this trip has helped to break that habit and I have found that I learned much more about the people we worked with and the culture of Palau then I would have reading reports, or something out of a book. I feel that this lesson will continue help me become a more knowledgeable person.
Selected Journal entries by date: 3/24/12 - The first day on the island we dragged ourselves from bed and then began the slow work of unpacking all of our gear and robot parts, assembling our robot together, and making sure everything was still working properly. After everything was tested and checked we heading out to a meeting we had scheduled with the University of Hawaii Graduates that were running AUVs to do testing on the Ocean around Palau. They explained to us how the systems on the AUV worked and the different tests they were performing with them. I think I speak for the whole team when I say that their $250,000 AUV’s were a little more complex than our little ROV. - Scott Watson
3/25/12 - It was our first day out on the water and we had no idea what to expect! First we were taken out to the marina and set up our systems. Everything seemed to work fine; therefore, we were ready and excited to go out to the water. Wesley, Cody, Brianna, Mr. Richards and Jenny traveled out to the Corsair crash site area with the BentProp team. Soon after arriving in the crash zone, we noticed many changes we add/fix to our robot. For instance, the buoyancy was off and our organization skills were not up to par. Also the control system and power seemed to be a problem. When we came back in from the water we discovered a major problem. the housing and a camera had sprung a leak. This was a disappointment to the team, but we kept our heads up and continued on with our extraordinary journey. So we fixed our problem and carried on. - Cody & Wesley
3/26/12 - On this day we met the President of Palau and the U.S. Ambassador to Palau. The Ambassador was a very nice and intelligent woman who cared about our program. She was very easy to talk to and had a lot of knowledge to lay on us students. She gave us a pin that had the United States flag and the Palau flag on it to symbol both countries coming together. After, we met the president. He was a very laid back man and he was not like our president in the United States. He didn’t wear a suit and tie, but was still professional in his own way. We told him about our mission in Palau and we gave him a Detroit Tigers jersey. In return he gave all of us a basket. Inside was a paper cutter, DVD, and turtle stand. - Taylor Parks
3/27/12 - It’s the second day on the water. After fixing a small leak problem the day before, we were ready to take on the deep blue again. In the morning we were feeling good. We spent an hour putting the robot together, setting the buoyancy, and making sure everything worked. Everything was all set and the black team finally pushed off from the dock. The orange team was told to meet the boat back at the dock exactly three and a half hours after they pushed off. We thought we would go to the dock a little bit early and grab a bite to eat. Unfortunately, the team was already back at the dock and unpacked with very devastated looks on their faces. The ROV leaked again. We all sat together and had a quick debrief about the day and decided to take the rest of the day to figure out this new leak and get it fixed before the next dive. We shined a light into our electrical housing and found the culprit, a hairline crack in the end-cap with all the connectors. Luckily, we constructed a second end cap before we left for Palau. Although we had an end-cap built, we still had to redo all the solder joints inside the electrical housing. We knew we had a long day ahead of us. We finally finished reconstructing the electrical housing just before dinner. We tested it for leaks in a bathtub and everything was all good! Knowing that the ROV was all put together and ready for the ocean, we could finally relax the next day. - Buck Poszywak
3/28/12 - We got a chance to visit with the guys from Camp Katuu in Palau. “SeaBees” were very welcoming and took time out of their day to show us around their station. We learned a little about what they do for Palau and the citizens of Palau. My thoughts when meeting up with these guys is that they were all very cool people and seemed to care about the country of Palau. What struck me most fascinating about these guys is that they are gone for six months of their year, in Palau, away from their families and still love what they do with their lives. These guys are very inspiring and great motivators for a group of High School students like us. - Brianna Baldridge
3/29/12 - This was the first day we imaged the Corsair. The black team traveled out to the crash site in the morning and faced some issues with the video, but came back with some outstanding footage of the robot diving and a little bit of the Corsair. When they came back in, the second group traveled back out to the Corsair. This time we got about a hour and a half worth of footage! Also, the GoPro camera we mounted in place of our underwater video camera captured some amazing shots. This was a major success for the team and helped bring up our esteem after the first two days of problems. - Cody Chadwick
3/30/12 - Although the Corsair dive the day before was a success, the thrusters were not putting as much power as they should out, and the surface current pulled our robot around. So after a few hours of problem solving we found that the tether wires that we had hooked up for power couldn’t stand the current draw from the thrusters because of their insufficient size (wire-gage). To solve the problem we bought 200 feet of 16 gage wire and ran two lengths of it (one for positive, one for negative) along the tether cord and epoxied it into the connector. When we tried it to our relief the thrusters had over four times as much power, since the power to them went up from 5 watts to 24 under load. - Scott Watson
3/31/12 - Rock Island Tour After a frustrating day of making repairs to our robot we got to have a relaxing day. As a team we hit the water again, but this time for fun. We went on the Rock Island Tour. We got to snorkel over 2 different reefs, in Jelly Fish Lake (which was amazing!), in the Milky Way and over an old fishing boat. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking! - Jenny
4/1/12 - Today we took the robot down to get footage of a Jake. We were able to get more control out of our robot, but later in our dive, the robot was getting less responsive. Knowing that there could of been a possible leak, we decided to pull up and check the robot. When we finally got to the surface, we realized that it was just some connection errors. After fixing the errors and playing with the controls, we decided it was time to for our first deep dive. At five o'clock we hit the bottom of the ocean and ten minutes later saw a boat, the Daihatsu. After forty minutes imagining the boat, we decided to come up and call it a day due to time. - Wesley Havens 4/2/12 - On Monday the team started with a tether extension to allow the robot to reach greater depths. We began this way because on Sunday our robot, Dingar, reached about 120 ft deep in the ocean. At this depth there was a limited amount of area we could search because the tether was almost at its full length with the robot straight down in the water. To fix the problem we added about fifty feet to our tether using an extension attached with a connector. With the addition it would be possible to start moving the robot in search patterns. At the morning brief with BentProp we estimated that the extension would take an hour to add on; However, it took around two hours to complete, which some of us found a little frustrating. After the tether was extended the team set out on the boat to go to the suspected ball turret sight. Buck was feeling a little sick so he made the decision to stay back at the hotel. Once Joe anchored the boat we began to setup all of our equipment. It took more time than usual because we only had three of us to work the entire system. A lot of mistakes were also made because of our lack of a checklist for the day. For example we forgot to turn on our GoPro camera and flashlights. But, after a little while we were able to deploy the robot and run it down to the bottom. On the bottom we had control for about 10 minutes before we ran into problems. The video camera image was a little fuzzy and one of the motors seemed to be running continuously. It was a problem that we had encountered the day before when the robot's micro controller was out of batteries and the connector was corroded. Just to be sure we ran the robot up to the surface and opened the electrical housing and connector. To our dismay there was water in the housing and the connector was very corroded. We decided to go back to the dock and create a plan of action for fixing the robot. Back at the hotel we decided to take a day to rest up and fix the robot by putting epoxy in the connector and drying out the micro controller. It was also decided that we should make a new checklist and organize our toolboxes to make our system more efficient. - Barb Lance
4/3/12 - In the morning was when we did repairs on the ROV. The ROV had leaks and this was our last effort to repair it. We put epoxy around the connectors because that was where we believed the leak was coming from. After the repair we went to OTV. They broke us up into two different groups and we were interviewed together. This was a great opportunity for me because I have a hard time speaking in front of people. It was nerve racking at first, but after a few minutes of the interview I was comfortable with being on TV. Rondy Ronny was our host and he was a funny guy. He made it seem like we weren't getting interviewed on TV which made it a lot easier to talk. - Taylor Parks
4/4/12 - The last day out on the water. We encased the entire connector with epoxy and silicone the day before and was all set to head out on the boat one last time with the BentProp team. The BentProp group was kind enough to stay at the hotel until 15 minutes before we were ready to push off. This gave us as much time as we needed without them looking over our shoulder or looking too bored while we set everything up and tested to make sure everything worked. We pushed off the dock at 10:10am. We made it to the dive spot around 11am and tried getting the boat as close to the GPS location as possible. After about an hour of moving the boat around and around on the not so calm waters, we decided to just toss the ROV overboard and set way points. 125 feet down and we lose all control to the thrusters. Not a good sign. Since we fixed a leak before and kind of jerry rigged it we were sure that the entire electrical housing was filled with water. The camera still worked though. We decided to just have our amazing boat captain strategically move the boat over the GPS target while the tether pulled the ROV. Constantly pulling the tether up two feet then down two feet we kept the ROV just barely off the sandy bottom. After an hour and a half we decided to call it a day and pull the ROV up by the tether. Opening the electrical housing we expected a waterfall to pour out but there actually wasn’t very much water. The water wasn’t the problem; the “brains” to our robot had a dead battery. Once the day was over we had a very in-depth debrief. We went over everything including what we did wrong, what we will do differently, how we enjoyed working with BentProp, what BentProp could do better, how well we learned from past mistakes, and how to prepare for next year's expedition. All in all a successful last mission! - Buck Poszywak
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