Author: Administrator

We put the Sky Pup up on the trailer for fitting.

Everything fit as it should. Now it needs the over the wing webbing mounts and the tail dolly tie down points.

Drew working on quad instrumentation.

Ed mounting an antenna on Away 48.

I’ve been moving old JPA video from tape to DVD. Here a clip from a balloon launched rocket test in 1995.

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We’re getting ready for the flight of the Tandem airship this fall, but we’ve already started design work on the next Tandem.  Here’s a peek at what we’re thinking.

We intend to use Tandems for Dark Sky Station Assembly, Mach Glider launching and for launching large rockets.

The team spent Saturday getting Away 47 and Away 48 closer to flight. Paul and Anthony got the cameras aligned to film rockets for Away 47 while Mike finessed the payloads for Away 48.   On another project the landing gear strap down mounts were added to the trailer.  I’m not sure if the Tandem or the Sky Pup will be the first vehicle to get to ride on the trailer.

The wing saddles are on the trailer. Next to do is the hard points for strapping the landing gear down. It maybe easier just to fly it to the airport…

Away 47 was wired up on Saturday. GPS antennas, telemetry antenna and power cables all were mounted to the frame. It’s always a routing puzzle;  900 mhz cables can’t be near GPS cables, some cables need to be toward the outside of the frame while other toward the inside and nothing can protrude to catch on the launch team.

In addition calibration work continued on the quad engine test stand.

View from Away 36 about two years ago.

Away 47 is our next vehicle to head to the black.  Away 47 is another problem solving mission, a flight dedicated to troublingshooting a whole series of odds and ends. Saturday it got the position telemetry system installed along with the GPS antenna deck. The team also continued to put a lot of work into the new balloon release circuit and the trailer.

It looks like a big wooden fender, but it’s really a wing mounting deck.

This drawing is from “The Builders Log”, the sequel to “Floating to Space”.  Available Christmas.