Journal Entry

I thought that is was time to give you all an update. The new school year brought new students and a new teaching partner for me named Frederick Wagner. Mr. Wagner just retired from the United States Navy after 20 years and was most recently stationed in Guam where he supervised almost 200 sailors that handled a variety of industrial jobs.

As you may remember from reading my June 2nd and June 9th journal entries, we are creating an underwater remotely operated vehicle that we affectionately call S.A.R.A. When I last gave you all an update, my students had built a frame, two floats, a base, and started attaching the thrusters.

I should explain that we are using a book, Build Your Own Underwater Robot by Harry Bohm and Vickie Jensen, as a guide for building our ROV. I thought it would be a better learning experience if we had to do most of it ourselves. It has definitely been a learning experience with ups and downs. Let me try to explain just what has been happening.

The students, Mr. Wagner, and I all sat down together, talked about the project, and looked at what had been accomplished by the previous students.

One thing that everyone noticed was that the frame was a little lop-sided. We realized that the problem was the method we had used to cut the PVC pipe. We had used a hand saw which isn't very accurate. The ROV was tilting about a quarter of an inch to one side. Everyone talked and decided to build a new frame. Mr. Wagner bought a PVC pipe cutter and I still had some leftover PVC pipe that we could use. Dajon, Tyrone, and Garon cut new pieces of PVC and then used PVC cement to attach the pieces together. Tyrone, Cameron, and Mr. Wagner then used a battery-operated drill to put holes in the frame to help control buoyancy. We want the ROV to go under the water and not just float on the top.

Making a new frame for S.A.R.AMr. Wagner, Tyrone, and Cameron are drilling holes into the new frame.

The next step was to paint the frame. Garon came up with the idea to use colors inspired by SpongeBob. After all, S.A.R.A. will be going to where SpongeBob lives.

Ronikqua spray paints the new frame.Ronikqua, modeling a new hairdo, is painting the frame a lovely lime green inspired by SpongeBob.

Once we had rebuilt the frame it was obvious that the floats needed to be adjusted. Mr. Wagner used the PVC pipe cutter to trim the 3 inch pipes that are part of the floats.

Mr. Wagner makes new floats.Mr. Wagner uses a PVC pipe cutter to recut the floats for S.A.R.A.

Then Ken spray painted the floats SpongeBob yellow. We took the parts outside to have a well-ventilated area. The danger of inhaling fumes is something that you have to take seriously. There are many children today that abuse inhalants.

Watch those fumes!Ken is painting the floats SpongeBob yellow. He remembers to cover his face so that he won't inhale the fumes.

We spray painted the base (cut from the bottom of a plastic milk crate) a lovely shade of pink. After all, S.A.R.A. is a girl. Tyrone then used plastic tie wraps to attach 4 of the 6 thrusters. These thrusters will enable us to move the ROV left, right, backwards, and forwards. We originally attached a thruster in each of the four corners of the base. However, we decided to change the placement of the thrusters to give the ROV better spin.

Tyrone attaches the thrusters.The ROV has a total of six thrusters that help it move up, down, left, right, backwards, and forwards.

We are constructing a base for the other 2 thrusters which move the ROV up and down. We cut a piece of Plexiglas and then drilled holes in it and used plastic tie wraps to attach the thrusters. The problem that we are having is how to attach the piece of Plexiglas to the base. We are still working on this problem, but I will let you know what we end up doing.

Well, now you are just about caught up with our project to build an underwater remotely operated vehicle. The next few days will be very busy because we are trying to finish building S.A.R.A. by Wednesday, October 15th. This is because that is when we are going camping and we would like to take S.A.R.A. and deploy her in the water.

Hopefully, you will get to see a completed ROV. Please keep checking back to see our progress and let's all cross our fingers and hope it works out.