Essay:
The practicum site that I had my internship with was a company called Red Six Solutions, LLC. At Red Six, they act as a strategic advisory consulting firm whose goal is to provide their clients with an aerial understanding of threats that might endanger the client. I found this site because the CEO of Red Six is my neighbor and long-time family friend. He knows I'm aerospace engineering so he offered me a position to intern there whenever, if I ever wanted to. I thought the opportunity would be really great so I took it and used it to count towards my practicum project. Advice that I would give to future SGC Scholars on identifying a practicum site is to put yourself out there and use your network. Don't be afraid to email a significant number of people asking about taking a position at their company. Try and figure out people you know who may be in the industry you want to do your practicum in or know a contact in that industry. It helps to know people!
At Red 6 Solutions, my topic of work dealt with the autonomous flight of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or UAS for short. A UAS consists of an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, the ground control station, autopilot, and radio transmitter and receiver. The UAV used was the Opterra, the ground control station used was Mission Planner, the autopilot used was the Cube Orange, and we used Futaba transmitters and receivers. First, I familiarized myself with Mission Planner, a ground control station software, by reading its documentation and practicing with the software. Then, I worked side-by-side with my mentor who showed me the process of programming and constructing the UAS. This is where I learned how to utilize Mission Planner to set waypoints for the Opterra to fly, how to calibrate the accelerometer, magnetometer, and radio for the autopilot, how to designate servo outputs, how to change the flight mode channels and setup the Pulse Width Modulation values, how to connect the transmitter to the receiver, how to connect Mission Planner to the autopilot via USB and an RFD900 radio link, and how to do many other things in Mission Planner. After that, I was given two missions to program on my own to test what I had learned. Independently, I went through the same process as before, but without the help of my mentor. I programmed the autopilot, developed my own working parameter file, and constructed the UAS to be ready to fly. As a final test and a nice ending to the internship, I went to Patuxent Aeromodelers RC Club to actually fly the Opterra in the auto flight mode. I also got some stick time experience by flying it in the stabilize flight mode with no auto waypoints set.
I learned a lot about the science related to my site. When constructing the Opterra, I learned to place the battery towards the front at the nose so that it would be more nose heavy than not. I learned how to solder, which is a useful skill I may need to use at some point in my career. During launch, I learned it is better to do a hand launch against the wind than with the wind because throwing against the wind will generate more lift and therefore make for a successful launch. Lastly, I learned that you have to trim the elevons of the Opterra to be flush with the airfoil before you put it in flight because it does not come pre trimmed.
The work I did at Red Six Solutions has impacted me beyond science. I definitely gained an appreciation for the practical connections between Science and other parts of Society. Red Six Solutions goal is to provide their clients with an aerial understanding of threats that might endanger the client. This directly relates to how science connects to society because we are seeing the use of science to aid in the defense of clients, specifically the government. This practicum project has also affected my future career plans because it allowed me to get a paid internship with Red Six Solutions over the summer of 2022. Interning there for the three weeks over the winter break allowed me to get accustomed to everyone in the company and their work environment, so it made sense for me to go back there over the summer in hopes to gain even more experience. Even though I ideally see my career path taking me the astronautical route of aerospace engineering, I'm appreciative for any intern experience I can get that can give me a better understanding of the industry I want to work in.