Qualified!!

Since we were so desperately in need of a "reed switch"--the exterior kill switch required by the competition--the team spent a good part of last night on a mad hatter shopping trip, driving from store to store in search of the appropriate equipment. This was all made even more fun by stuffing all five of us into Andrew's little station wagon. (Have you met Nathan Huntoon? 6'7'') Apparently not all Wal-Marts are open 24 hours a day, and not all gas stations take credit cards, so our relatively simple mission sent us traveling through three cities and forced us to backtrack more than once. The guys were up until 2 am working hard on the submarine.

But, hard work has a tendency to yield positive results, and the team was soon to be rewarded. The reed switch bought at Wal-Mart was a failure--too weak for our purposes--but our friends at the Naval Academy came to the rescue with a spare switch of their own. Both officers and gentlemen, they are.

When it came time to do the all-important qualifying run, everything was prepared, and Seahorse 2 passed with flying colors. The diver who monitored the robot's journey through the gate said, "Well that was anti-climatic." No problems, no tricks: just smooth sailing. See for yourself and watch Austin's video of the event.

The rest of the day was a bit more laid back as the guys concentrated on the next obstacle: light detection. For those of you in the know, there was a problem with the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) method, but this was solved by switching to the simpler DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform). Once the code was fixed, the guys moved onto building, but not without a few pitfalls. Handy guys that they are, Nathan accidentally sautered his pants leg (that is, dropped melted metal on it) and Austin splattered his hand with epoxy. No pain, no gain, boys.

Tomorrow we'll try to qualify for the finals; our runs are scheduled for 9:20 am and 5:00 pm.