Mission Control we have a problem . . . maybe not a problem but a question, and that conversation is now taking place by the boat, talking direct to the engineers.
And in the case of Ineos Britannia America’s Cup team preparing for AC37 the engineers are at the Mercedes F1 base in Brackley, England.
INEOS Britannia’s testing boat, T6 is packed with sensors and technology, measuring loads and motion hundreds or even thousands of times a second. Video channels send the viewpoint of multiple cameras, monitoring every moment of the fluid flow over the aerofoils and hydrofoils.
All this data goes into SIM cards connected to a 5G network, and is then transferred by an assured 1Gbps MPLS fibre link to the Sailing Support Room / Mission Control at the Mercedes F1 base in Brackley, England.
Dave Endean, Chief Operations Officer for the team commented, “The Sailing Support Room, or Mission Control, is a bit of a step up for us from previous campaigns.”
“It enables us to have eight or nine engineers based here in Brackley, supporting the operations wherever they happen to be. We’ve got full live data and video feedback. In the past this has always had a time delay which meant that this sort of support was impossible.”
“In practice, we keep the chatter down as much as we can, the sailors will talk to the coaching staff, and maybe a couple of engineers on the water who are controlling the tests that we’re executing that day.”
“We want to make sure that the boat communication is as quiet as possible because the sailors need the audio channel to talk to each other, to make sure that they get the boat around the track as smoothly as possible and as fast as they can.”
“So we keep all the other noise down, but if Ben wanted to talk to Joe about an aspect of the control system, he could push a button and Joe could talk directly back to him to answer his question.”
“It opens up the big organization back here in Brackley to fully support what’s happening in Palma. Although we need to do shifts in here, to support the unusual sailing hours that we need to get on the water when the wind’s right!”
“The extra efficiency means that almost every moment of the limited sailing time can be used effectively.”
The legendary US investor Warren Buffet said of time, “It’s the only thing you can’t buy.” And while that may have been true for Buffet, the Sailing Support Room has bought the team extra time on the water.
Engineering support for the AC75 has come a long way from the VHF radio and RIB enjoyed by the 12Ms, but then, so has almost everything else in the America’s Cup.
