Another test of the new steering system today. We had a lot of success controlling the kite, including sailing through the sea-wall gap and making an impressive kite recovery at the end of the test. We were able to get on the foils a few times, but no sustained foiling. The sea state was really choppy–at one point a fish landed on the Protector–but the wind was only slightly stronger than yesterday.
Today three French journalists from the program Thalassa on France3, one of France’s national public television stations, visited to film a kiteboat test. Their half-hour program will profile interesting San Franciscans and should include some footage of Makani as well. We had a very successful test, foiling near Treasure Island and in front of the city, and we were able to get each journalist on K2 for a short time.
All of the electronic interconnects that glue together the various components inside the logger box are now consolidated on a single printed circuit board. This should simplify ongoing maintenance and make it much simpler to produce additional loggers.
As an experiment, a diode and bleed resistor have been added to the battery charging port, which may help prevent galvanic corrosion at its terminals, which will almost certainly be exposed to some seawater.
