Wednesday 14 April 2010: Day tree at beBEC

8 o'clock wake up got even worse. First thing today was a company presentation of Cisco. Unfortunately, they didn't show up. Good thing was that we had some time to catch up on some sleep. An hour later, the company Fost Plus arrived for another team design. They started with a general company presentation, they organize the recycling industry in Belgium. The assignment was interesting, we were given a box with packaging material with the goal to build a heating device. Water had to go from one reservoir to another which was at a lower level and in between we would have to design a heating device that would heat the water by using a lamp. The device would be placed under the lamp for one hour. In retrospect, we didn't really did a fantastic job on this one. We took a juice box for the high reservoir, used some straws to make a channel. Under the lamp, we put a metal dish to reflect the heat as much as possible and made the straws go in loops to let the water stay under the lamp as long as possible. Once the water had passed under the lamp, it was stored in some Styrofoam cups. Just before lunch, the device was set up and the water was poured into the first reservoir. We got some time to eat and to prepare a presentation. We lost track of time while eating and talking and suddenly realised that we only had five minutes left to make the presentation. We quickly made a schematic drawing, came up with some key words for our solution. The focus this time was on efficiency and waste elimination.

After an hour, the temperatures were measured and our results were somewhat disappointing. Almost all water had gone to the reservoir, but much too quickly. It had only gotten three degrees warmer. Some other teams managed to do a lot better. Even with our fantastic presentation skills, we wouldn't be able to win this one. It was UCL who had the honours this time.

After the team design we had the whole afternoon free, for most of us this meant sleeping or getting into the sauna. It was also a great moment for Xavier, as we finally got a hold on some fish food!

Tonight was the traditional international evening. All teams brought some typical drinks and food from their region. This meant an awful lot of Belgian beers and liquors, Waffles from Brussels, pancakes with Stella Artois from Leuven, and a lot more. We, as Belgians, were representing Holland, so we went for the traditional “broodje kroket” and decided not to bring any Dutch beers – as they wouldn’t be able to compete with all the Belgian beers. But everybody loved the “kroketten”, the Dutch culinary image has gained some popularity today!

Photo 1: Our water heater for the Fost Plus exercise

Photo 2: Jan and Stein taking a nap in the afternoon

Photo 3: Our famous Dutch "kroketten"

Photo 4: Liege and Portugal on the international evening

Photo 5: KU Leuven and their local food and driknks

Tuesday 13 April 2010: Day two at beBEC

8 o'clock wake up is terrible. First, we had a short breakfast and then did our utmost to stay awake during the presentation of Thales. They started with a company presentation and then we got the objective of the case study: “Design a space mission to deflect an asteroid heading towards earth”. As four Aerospace Engineering students, we might have had just a little bit of an advantage here. Actually, the only thing we had to do was read a booklet and make a nice presentation. Once we saw the presentation of the guys from Leuven, it was clear that they would win today. Once we had seen all presentations, the jury came together and after giving the usual talk that all teams did a wonderful job, but that there could only one winner, they announced that the winner was:... Ghent! What a surprise this was!

Some time later, during lunch, the guys from Thales had an extra announcement. Apparently there was a slight mix-up. Ghent didn't win the case study, it was Leuven who actually won it. After this, the team from Ghent didn't enjoy themselves anymore and went home. Exit Ghent.

After lunch, we were given the materials for the fire truck and could finally get to do some real work. The big idea was the KISS-mobil, with a large focus to “Keep It Super Simple”. After long hours of hard labour, we already had a robot which could go back and forth. Our simple plan was going well.

The plan for tonight was the Rubik's Cube Party: Wear six different colours, exchange clothes to be in one colour à get a free cocktail! Later that night we also managed to get half a crate of beer just by doing some limboing. (Well, “we” in this case are Maarten and Stein. The others weren’t so into limboing...). We were doing our best to keep the Dutch spirit alive: spend as little as possible!

Photo 1: some outdoor working on robot parts

Photo 2: working very hard on our robot

Photo 3: Rubik's Cube Party party with free beers :-)

Monday 12 April 2010: Arrival Day at beBEC

Today would be a long day. Some of us had to do an exam and we still had to figure out what (or who?) our mascot.would be. For the mascot we just went to the local pet store and bought ourselves a little gold fish. The fish was given the name Xavier and put in a bottle. The exams were filled in and we were ready to go. It took us five hours and a pit stop at home to arrive at our destination, a large villa on a hillside of Durbuy. Xavier didn't look very happy after the rough, twisting ride through the mountains of Durbuy. For the remaining of the week he would rest traumatised on the bottom of his bottle. But here we were, in a large villa, filled with Flemish and Wallonian people. Name tags and T-shirts were handed out while somebody asked a question we had never thought about: “what would Xavier eat this week?” We would have to find some fish food quickly or our mascot would not be able to survive this great adventure.

We had just installed ourselves in our room, when we were called to gather outside for some “get-to-know” games. After having met everyone and trying to remember their names, we gathered in the conference room for the explanation of the main team design. This team design would be spread over the whole week. The goal was to build sort of a fire truck, which could suck water from a bowl, drive to the other side of the table and eventually put out four candles. The truck had to be remotely controlled by a hydraulic system made from syringes and tubes. We got an hour just to brainstorm a little bit; tomorrow we would get the materials and do some real work.

Finally there was some food, unfortunately it was German inspired: Frankfurters with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. Luckily the food got better every day. :-)

Now it was time for some fun activity: A room rally. The idea: mix all teams in groups of four, tie them together and make them go from room to room to play some games.

Photo 1: Arriving and unpacking our stuff

Photo 2: Our fishy mascot Xavier

Photo 3: Our team at the first party, with our angel.

The first step: dBEC!

This is a story of teamwork, perseverance and a little bit of luck. It all started when a Warren was talking about the very first dBEC he was organising here in Delft. It sounded like a great challenge, so we signed up, no idea of the journey we had just embarked upon.

It was a sunny Thursday afternoon. ING had prepared an interesting case study for us. After a long and very interesting presentation, we put our heads together and tried to come up with the best IT-delivery system. It took us a while to figure out what was expected from us, but eventually we came up with some great ideas. I won't go into detail, but it had something to do with a skeleton and some islands. We presented our fantastic solution, the jury took some time to make a decision and to our greatest amazement, we didn't win. We finished third and went home with a bottle of cheap vodka and a passport holder from ING. Our journey in the BEST Engineering Competition had ended. Or so we thought.

Some days went by, when suddenly we got a call from BEST delft, it was Warren, "The winners can't go to beBEC" he said. "Neither the second team can“, he said next. Then he asked the question we had only dreamt of: "Is your team available to go to beBEC?"

This is how we, four Belgian Aerospace Engineering students got to go to beBEC, representing Delft University of Technology.

Having only finished third in the local round, our goal was simple: Enjoy it! There was no way we could get any further than this. (Little did we know).

Photo 1: our team working hard on the solution during the dBEC event.

Photo 2: Our team being satisfied while receiving our third place certificate.