Hey All!
So today there has been a lot of discussion amongst our team on what to do with Challenger. As I have mentioned over the past week, we have a glider in trouble. Challenger has run into an issue with her compass that causes her some difficulty when given a heading to the north which has spurred a number of tests throughout the week. The tests have consisted of altering a number of flight parameters in order to try and find the sweet spot that will allow us to fly our best.
While this is going on, we began to brain storm our different options for where we go from here. Running test after test has been very strenuous on the batteries and we want to make sure we still have enough power to get across.
Ideas that were being thrown around included finding our way back to South Africa to fix the compass immediately, making a B-line directly across and making landfall in Rio de Janeiro, taking a more southern route towards Fortaleza or continuing with the original path pushing our limits with the compass and trying our best to get up past St. Helena, Ascension Island and across to northern Brazil. This will be discussed in more detail in our morning meeting.
As for the immediate location of Challenger, the GeoEye/SeaStar data set is showing that there is a warm eddy to our west that is causing the eastern flux that we are seeing at the moment. With the current way point to the north west, we should be able to continue making decent progress through the night before we run more tests in the morning
Force Wind Sea & Honor