Day 11 - "We're coming home, coming home...oh wait no we're not"
Our final day in China. And what a day it's been!
After our social activities last night, bright eyed and bushy tailed is not an expression I would use to describe my course mates in any capacity! However, with all due credit, we all managed to attend breakfast, eat something, get packed and get downstairs in time to get the coach.
The coach took us to the same University we went to yesterday, HUST, where we were to get involved in some practical activities. Our first stop was the towing tank that the University use.
Now I feel at this point I should clear something up about Southampton's very own towing tank. Yes we have one. It's 136m long. Yes the wave machine works. No, it doesn't tow anything because the motors haven't been delivered yet. So back to HUST's towing tank. It's 175(ish)m long, and does tow things, albeit at a slower rate than Boldrewood will do, with a top speed of 8m/s (Boldrewood will do 12m/s). We all climbed on board the carriage and observed the vessel to be towed, which was a large metal block stretching across the width of the tank like a pond skimmer, but made of aluminium. The block was attached to a 6DOF device (see yesterday's blog), that allowed the vessel to move freely, but also record what it is doing. After observing the various safety infractions (such as some Chinese students further down the tank putting electrical wire over the track, as well as their hands, and the carriage very nearly running them over), we travelled down the tank at a slow speed so that we could see the carriage in motion. We then disembarked the carriage and observed a demonstration of a UUV (Unmanned Underwater Vehicle) that could be controlled via an app on an iPad, connects via wifi to the umbilical, and then from the umbilical to the UUV. This was fun to observe, and they even let us have a go at piloting it!
Our next activity was slightly less hands on, in that it was basically a theory lesson in ship structures, which we already knew quite a bit from due to both Dr Boyd's production assignment, and Jon Downes' structures lectures. We were given a brief lecture, and then headed to the next room. In there were some very large scale models (around 9m long) of a container ship and a submarine. These were transparent in some places and also on rails, meaning you could separate the different components and get a better understanding of the way the structure is put together. This was very interesting for the container ship, it even more so for the submarine, which had a completely different structural makeup! We then tried our hands at rebuilding some structural sections made from laser cut plastic (it's more difficult than it sounds!).
After a final lunch, we had an hour to wait until the coach picked us up, so we took a stroll down to see some waterlilies, which were very pleasant. On the way back we bid a (slightly tearful) farewell to Prof Yeping Xiong, who has remained in China to continue working on inter-university relationships.
Then the true saga began. We arrived at the airport with 3 hours to spare. This turned out not to be a good thing, as the flight turned out to be delayed an additional 2 hours. We then received further bad news in that the flight to London would be delayed by another 6 hours! However, this turned out to be the previous day's flight, not today's!
I'm currently writing this still in Wuhan airport, waiting to board the flight, as we have been for the past 5 hours, and my patience is slowly wearing thin!
I'll update the blog when anything's happened, but for now, this is Harry, from China, signing off!
The coach took us to the same University we went to yesterday, HUST, where we were to get involved in some practical activities. Our first stop was the towing tank that the University use.
Now I feel at this point I should clear something up about Southampton's very own towing tank. Yes we have one. It's 136m long. Yes the wave machine works. No, it doesn't tow anything because the motors haven't been delivered yet. So back to HUST's towing tank. It's 175(ish)m long, and does tow things, albeit at a slower rate than Boldrewood will do, with a top speed of 8m/s (Boldrewood will do 12m/s). We all climbed on board the carriage and observed the vessel to be towed, which was a large metal block stretching across the width of the tank like a pond skimmer, but made of aluminium. The block was attached to a 6DOF device (see yesterday's blog), that allowed the vessel to move freely, but also record what it is doing. After observing the various safety infractions (such as some Chinese students further down the tank putting electrical wire over the track, as well as their hands, and the carriage very nearly running them over), we travelled down the tank at a slow speed so that we could see the carriage in motion. We then disembarked the carriage and observed a demonstration of a UUV (Unmanned Underwater Vehicle) that could be controlled via an app on an iPad, connects via wifi to the umbilical, and then from the umbilical to the UUV. This was fun to observe, and they even let us have a go at piloting it!
Our next activity was slightly less hands on, in that it was basically a theory lesson in ship structures, which we already knew quite a bit from due to both Dr Boyd's production assignment, and Jon Downes' structures lectures. We were given a brief lecture, and then headed to the next room. In there were some very large scale models (around 9m long) of a container ship and a submarine. These were transparent in some places and also on rails, meaning you could separate the different components and get a better understanding of the way the structure is put together. This was very interesting for the container ship, it even more so for the submarine, which had a completely different structural makeup! We then tried our hands at rebuilding some structural sections made from laser cut plastic (it's more difficult than it sounds!).
After a final lunch, we had an hour to wait until the coach picked us up, so we took a stroll down to see some waterlilies, which were very pleasant. On the way back we bid a (slightly tearful) farewell to Prof Yeping Xiong, who has remained in China to continue working on inter-university relationships.
Then the true saga began. We arrived at the airport with 3 hours to spare. This turned out not to be a good thing, as the flight turned out to be delayed an additional 2 hours. We then received further bad news in that the flight to London would be delayed by another 6 hours! However, this turned out to be the previous day's flight, not today's!
I'm currently writing this still in Wuhan airport, waiting to board the flight, as we have been for the past 5 hours, and my patience is slowly wearing thin!
I'll update the blog when anything's happened, but for now, this is Harry, from China, signing off!
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