Another amazing, action-packed week of submarine racing is over.  The KIDS sub, Rubber Duckie, won the top speed category for Independent entries.  Woot woot!  

Each person on the team contributed in so many ways.   Parents ferried youth and supplies and coordinated food.  Youth staffed our welcome table, emergency wagon, tank refill cart, etc.  Parents and youth worked together as our dive team.  Our adventurous pilots Abby, Sean and Teddy each had a couple of turns piloting the sub.  Rubber Duckie was showing "war wounds" from hitting the sides of the model basin several times.

We learned much about communication, working as a team, sticking to the mission, design and manufacturing, project management and more.  The whole project was a great learning experience, made better by the wonderful people who are part of Kids Into Discovering Science.

A special shout out to all our sponsors:  Argosy International, Visionary Consulting, Fusion Fiber, Knights of Columbus, College of Southern Maryland, Blue Octopus Scuba, FASTSIGNS of Waldorf, Cardinal Scientific, SolidWorks, Macia Construction, Chik-fil-A Waldorf.  We couldn't have done it without you!
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Cutting the wooden skeleton pieces out on the ShopBot Alpha at TechShop in Arlington, Virginia.  The pieces were created by importing our STL file generated in SolidWorks to Autodesk 123D Make.

Liam and Teddy complete the wooden skeleton assembly.

Scarlett and Teddy scribe the foam pieces which will fill the voids in the skeleton.

Teddy arranged for a working session at Fusion Fiber.  Dec 20 turned out to be a cold day in Breezy Point.  All the puddles in the parking lot were covered with ice.  Inside the workshop, Mr. Whitley got his kerosene "blast furnace" working.  Boy, does a powerful heater make a world of difference.  Once the chill wore off, Teddy and Sean were put to work fiberglassing a replacement transom on a boat that was being converted from a duck hunting boat to a fishing boat.   While the resin was curing, the duo got to help with the re-painting of a large (and fast) boat outside.  The clear coat had already been removed.  A layer of guide coat was sprayed on and Teddy and Sean took turns sanding the guide coat off.  Then it was time to return to the warm interior and apply gelcoat to the transom.  Mrs. Carts was assigned photodocumentation and note taking duty for this trip.  We all learned a lot.

Since our last post, so much has happened.  Perhaps the most significant change is that the KIDS membership voted to merge our two submarine teams.  Now the elementary and middle school youth are supporting the teen leaders to work on a single, one-person propeller submarine.  Everyone seems happy with the decision; the energy level has definitely increased.  More recently the youth voted on a new name for the submarine.  They chose Rubber Ducky!  We'll have some fun with this moniker.

We didn't meet last week either, this is starting to become a trend it seems, mainly because no one was able to make it which was no big deal at this point, but we need to work on making it to meetings. Anyways today we were finalizing what is required for the preliminary design reviews and helping each other think through our designs. Today is our last meeting until the Preliminary design report since next week is another board meeting.

We didn't have a meeting last week since there was a board meeting and the majority of our team members are on the student advisory board. In the future we will have to meet early as activity starts to pick up.
Abby also brought in an example of a Pairwise analysis chart and demonstrated how to use it, with lots of help from Mrs. Jen of course. We all decided to use the pairwise chart to eliminate our designs and spent the rest of the meeting deciding on ranking criteria.
Also.. Happy Birthday to Garrett!

Today we spent most of the meeting trying to figure out what type of system we would use to eliminate designs, the job ended up getting past to Abby, since she is the systems integrator. Although any suggestions would be super helpful! 

Today we started on our designs for our first design report!
We are going to have a total of three design reports for this submarine; the preliminary design report, the detailed design report, and the critical design report!
The Friday meetings for now are mainly going to be systems integration meetings so we can avoid having to cut huge foot holes in the bottom of the hull...

Today we were faced with the problem of how to update each other on, and keep a record of our progress. We decided on something similar to the quad charts from last year (Thanks Mrs. Jen!) but a little more manageable for us teenagers. As team leader, Garrett took on the job of making the sheet for us to fill up, and had it posted onto Rallyhood before the end of the meeting! We are all supposed to have a filled out weekly update sheet printed out to present at the beginning of the meetings, or electronic versions posted onto Rallyhood to present.
We also made an official timeline! We mapped out everything from design reports to the deadline for pilot scuba certifications. But since this is our first year trying something new like we are without as much mentor support as we have had previously, we fully expect our timeline to shift somewhat, hopefully not by that much though!