Now less than 1200km from the shores of Cape Town, Challenger is continuing to push onwards towards recovery.
Over the past week, RTOFS has continued to be our go to forecast model as lately it has been nearly spot on when compared to the currents being reported by the glider.
Despite having seemingly favorable currents, our progress made good has plummeted recently due to the compass errors 29 has been having.
Over the past couple months we have seen the heading error trending upward, however within the past few weeks it has sky rocketed. This we presume is due to the magnetic lows associated with the region. Back in 2013 when Challenger was leaving Cape Town we had similar issues which led to difficulty steering as well.
In order to combat these issues, Dave is devising a plan to try different pump and pitch angles to see if the angle the glider is diving and climbing will have a positive effect on the compass.
As we head into the weekend, we are pushing the gliders way point to the east as a precautionary measure. Currently the east coast of the US is getting hit with a massive snow storm which among other things has the potential to knock out power to our facilities cutting our connection to the glider.
Force Wind Sea & Honor