Group Member : Kyle - Glider Repair

Hey everyone, my names Kyle Ayala and I'm one of the 4 undergraduate students that are working on tracking the RU29 glider as it heads to Brazil. I'm currently a junior majoring in marine bio, and my part of this group's research is to look into glider repair.

Some questions that we are aiming to get answered are:

• What kind of repairs usually happen on the glider?
• What kind of damages usually happen to gliders?
• How is it fixed?
• How much is used to repair them?
• How are we going to retrieve and get it to Brazil?

As this project is an ongoing process, so is the information we receive and questions to be asked. As of right now, the glider has made an early trip to Ascension -- the pit stop destination before its final trip to San Paulo, Brazil (where we will do our final repair and retrieval). 

• Some news we have gathered so far on repairs/retrieval is that the tail got stuck during the trip, not sure how, but as we physically retrieve the glider we should know the cause in the near future.

As we send people down to Ascension for repair, they will be bringing along with them a spare tail and wings, and a new battery just incase the current ones cannot make the rest of the trip to Brazil. 

I'm currently in contact with a few of the professors and Neilson - who have given me some information on gliders. I'm also going to get in contact with Chip, who can hopefully give more even more information on how gliders are repaired and retrieved. Since he is going to Ascension to do maintenance on RU29, he'll know first hand on what needs to be done.

Some information that needs to be further looked into for the 2nd part of the trip is: 

• Understand Carnets
• Carnets are international customs and temporary export-import documents. It is used to clear customs in dozen of counties and territories without paying duties and import taxes on merchandise that will be re-exported within 12 months.
• Since we are going for a quick maintenance and release for the RU29 in Ascension, a British island, there are no troubles for repairs and being charged with fees.
• Research Brazilian Carnets
• Brazil does not accept the Carnet that we currently use for Ascension, so we have to look into finding a legal way to get the importing of the glider without paying taxes.
• Since Brazil is not accepting our carnet, if we currently do the importation with their taxes, its a 17% important fee..a total of $30,000 for one glider