Tackling the Volcano
Flanked by her team, Emily pilots the helicopter toward the volcano.
Remember the team of young women who intended to learn to fly a radio-controlled helicopter in one month?
Saturday was their day of reckoning, when they had to guide a payload of six ping pong balls to a target inside a model volcano 20 feet away.
It was Tech Challenge 2009, sponsored by the Tech Museum.
More than 1,000 students in grades 5 through 12 competed, 250 teams from around the Bay Area and as far away as San Diego and even New York.
I arrived at the event late Saturday morning, hoping to spot the team of girls, but was quickly overwhelmed by the crowds of participants and spectators.
An array of balloons floats above spectators ringing the competitions.
Twice I circled the room, dodging costumed teams of students carrying catapults, cranes, missiles, helicopters, balloons and a variety of homemade contraptions.
No luck. I didn’t spot them and they didn’t spot me.
So I settled in the bleachers to watch the spectacle.
Big video screens showed events throughout the darkened room, dramatized by an excited announcer.
At some point they linked the screens to a parallel event in New York and we watched a crummy video feed of something happening. I think it was a remote-controlled balloon, but I couldn’t see it well enough to tell if it failed or succeeded.
Suddenly I realized that a team of young women had queued up right in front of me, and they were flying a helicopter!
The girls jump for joy before the competition.
Sure enough, it was my friends, but by the time I caught up with them they had already flown. Emily’s mother, Eileen, told me that Emily succeeded in piloting the helicopter to the volcano, but then Emily lost sight of it behind the mountain and wasn’t able to maintain control.
When we first met, the team was three strong, but now it consisted of five young women: Kaitlynn Magnuson, Sushmitha Divakar, Emily Cheng, Mary Gao and Annie Ge. Anagramming their first name initials, they adopted MAKES as the team name. Emily tells me that it also stands for Mechanically Aviated Kinetic Electro Servo System. 
A Blade CX 2 carries the ultra-secret ping-pong ball releaser.
The helicopter they used for the event was not the Esky Honeybee they started with. Instead, and quite sensibly, they used a Blade CX 2 once they determined that it had sufficient lifting capacity.
Even though the Blade CX-2 is easier to fly, they deserve credit for keeping it in the air and reaching the volcano in the stress of competition.
Oh yeah, and Emily had a swim meet Friday, followed by her junior prom. Eileen says Emily was operating on no sleep.
Team MAKES didn’t win, but they did score a special award from the judges.
I hope we might see them again sometime at Baylands.
(Photos by Team MAKES and Pete Johnson)
Emily piloted pretty good in my opinion. The helicopter was very close and above the volcano and it suddenly changed direction and died.
Emily tried two times, both times it happened same way. The third time the copter refused to fly.
The team won the best jounal (documentation) award.
Good on em!
Glad they made it to the show – can’t win if you don’t enter.
Cheers!
Gary
Great story! I remember the day when the mom was at Baylands getting all sorts of help from old guys. From the pictures I now see why she said to keep their contraption a secret. We may need to do something of this caliber at Baylands. We’ll force everyone to wear hardhats. Lol
Way to go team MAKES!
Well done! A mighty good try at a quite complex problem!