Sofcoast's aerial products technical advisor and metanomy.org founder, Coby Leuschke (@cglusky) uses a phrase called "barefoot aero" to describe our team's design style, engineering approach and overall product philosophy. I think it's an appropriate term that describes bringing science, engineering and Subject Matter Experts (SME's) together to provide front end solutions for front line users to address and remedy tactical and situational awareness gaps they constantly experience, particularly during constraint heavy periods and situations.
One of the primary reasons we've (ultimately) chosen the design path we have (inflatable wing) is to dramatically improve efficiencies across multiple dimensions in order to deliver a highly efficient tactical aerostat system. Early on in this project, we looked around the market for a "best of breed" or "best in class" tactical aerostat capability that we (being SME's and end users ourselves) would be willing to use on a regular basis. When we discovered that one didn't exist, we realized (and thereby decided) that we were going to need to build one ourselves and, in doing so, we would need to depart from the typical lighter than air shapes and designs that we were seeing in the marketplace. That's where the term "barefoot aero" comes in.....over time and through trial and error...we've learned to get our math straight, continue to iterate our design, double check our calcs, get out of the building and test, test, test and iterate, iterate, iterate and always stay focused on empirical data and evidence.
After 14 plus months of hard work and incremental progress, today we've achieved several key product performance milestones. ASAP XP v004.5 was successfully towed behind a pickup truck at 20MPH in snowy and cold conditions with variable winds with gusts up to 8MPH. The system performed as designed and specified.
Here are three key lessons I've re-learned or been reminded of throughout this product development process.
Life lesson 1: Be Persistent. Knowledge, Persistence and willingness to try, fail, try, fail and stay focused are critical in providing you with a basis to drive your product development efforts and team forward and towards success.
Life lesson 2: Confront and own product shortfalls (and dare I say, failure's?) as fast as you can. Personally and organizationally this is critical and to achieve uncommon results it is imperative to deal with product performance and quality issues as early as possible for as long as it takes. Thinking and philosophies that allow the product team to compromise or to accept something less than completely nailing your design targets and goals will introduce a mindset of mediocrity. This is one area that is worth fighting to defend. Be patient and persist and do your absolute very best.
Life lesson 3: Kids, if you are reading this, pay close attention to your math and science subjects - it will serve you in life...you may not know how or see it yet...it works.
We're also happy that the system is on track with our lift / drag targets as well as our flight stability targets. We're also very pleased with a derivative result of reduced drag, which is achieving our target of less than 10 degree catenary (which is typical of traditional blimps and balloons). Translation: Less drag means more altitude with less line payout.
We believe that our private beta customers will be delighted with the price/performance mix our product delivers and also believe that there's plenty of room in our product roadmap for continously improving and increasing system performance and capabilities delivery.
Cheers, John
About
Sofcoast
develops affordable, game-changing solutions that empower local,
national and global entities in the public and private sectors to
connect and enable mobile field workers, defend against danger and
loss, and restore stability in the event of disaster.
