Many of you know of the Human Powered Submarine (HPS) contest offered by the San Diego Section of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).  HPS and ASME--San Diego invite educational institutions from around the world to design human powered submarines to compete in our area for various awards that are based on their design abilities, their presentations, and the submarine performance.  We feel this event offers much to the advancement of education, engineering, and community relations.   Unfortunately, last year we were forced to cancel the HPS-2008 event at the last minute due to unforeseeable technical difficulties at the event facility.  Many people were disappointed, a few very discouraged, and some institutions may have lost monies applied to preparation for the event.  We are very sorry that it had to happen and we are working hard to see that this never happens again!

The board of directors for this event is currently working to revive interest to keep this event going and maintain its location in San Diego.  Several of us are active members in the local dive community and the great local organizations that support it.  The purpose of this long winded message is…

 “We need your help!”

We have started our preparation for HPS–2010 and we are reaching out to the dive community for some assistance.   We need to find a new location to hold this event, preferably one that we can use consistently to support this every-other-year contest.  We are hopeful that one or more of you will have ideas or knowledge of large confined water basins that would support this activity in a safe and friendly manner.  Do any of you know of a fresh or salt water basin, in or around the San Diego area, which has all or any of the following attributes?  Anything even close to these attributes is worth reviewing!

Length: Approximately 200 ft
Width: Approximately 50 ft
Depth: 12 ft min - 20 ft max
Visibility: Hopefully no less than 20 ft

There should also be room for:

Sub launching,

Safety diver staging/preparation,

Paramedic’s staging/treatment,

Team vehicle storage/preparation/repair.

If you know of anything that you feel may be a potential site please contact any of the following board members:

Travis Hull     Travis.hull@uav.com

Nip Shah    nip.shah@hs.utc.com

Marty Townsend    tdint@aol.com

Tom Neillo    tom.neillo@ngc.com