A team of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) Mr. Cilindro gained the runner up of National Weather Balloon Competition (Kombat) in an annual contest of Indonesia Rocket Competition (Komurindo) and Kombat conducted on 22-25 August in Garut. The team comprising of three students of Electrical Engineering of UMY successfully defeated 14 of 16 teams from state and private higher education institutions. The students were Muhammad Khairul Syarif(2014), Rara Dwi Oktaviani and Dimas Oktanugraha (2014) as the team leader.
The contest was organized by National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) collaborating with Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education (Kemenristekdikti) and brought ‘Balloon Cargo Technology for Atmospheric and Maritime Observations’ as the theme. “For the Kombat category, the winner was Electronic Engineering Polytechnic Institute of Surabaya (PENS), the second runner up was University of Telkom Bandung, and the third runner up was University of Komputer Indonesia,” told Syarif in an interview on Saturday (26/8).
Supervised by an Electrical Engineering lecturer Rama Okta Wiyagi S.T., M. Eng., the team always participates the contest each year. “We are grateful and proud of being able to maintain this achievement since we also obtained the runner up last year. We thank UMY for supporting our team to join this Kombat. Our gratitude also goes to our supervisor who guided us till we got this achievement,” stated Syarif.
Syarif also informed that Kombat participants should concern with the contest scoring criteria. “We focused on the scoring indicators in detail such as temperature, altitude, wind direction, humidity, pressure, GPS recordings (Latitude and Longitude coordinates, ed.), auto track antenna, payload photo taking, and the value of CO2 levels in the atmosphere which is a secondary mission,” he mentioned.
Furthermore, the team prepared for the contest for four months. “We had a lot of preparation as the development of the cargo to transmit data and ground station as a data receiver and auto track antenna to follow the charge move,” said Syarif.
We also confronted obstacles during the contest. “The rotator antenna had not been used for a long time so that it was hard to follow the charge move. We hope that we get new equipment so that it will be much better to be used,” he wished.
“We expect that the team competing in the contest could gain a similar or better achievement and the university gives greater support so that more students will engage in the contest. Besides, I wish that this achievement could motivate other students to compete in technology fields nationally and internationally,” ended Syarif.
