Author: Administrator

Away 42 was the last of the Toshiba Chair flights.

Ed building the base of the upgraded crew module mock up.

Drew cutting foam squares that will be then be hot wired into to disks. The disks are part of the end caps for air beams for the new Dark Sky Station and Jelly Fish balloon. On the table next to him is the core of the first test quad engine.

Anthony is busy making a second set of mini rocket launch boxes for an upcoming Away mission.

Paul diligently sewing weight pockets for the tandem launch bag.

We picked up the Sky Pup last month in South Carolina. After an epic drive ahead of all the blizzards she’s now in the JPA shop. The Sky Pup service several purposes: spotter plane, training vehicle and research tool. She has an all foam structure cover in aircraft fabric. Prefect for JPA! The design has many high strength, extreme light weight aspects that bear study. She cruses at 55mph and this model has been flown to 18,000 feet.

We’re building a hard deck on the top of the wing to add a ballistic parachute, installing a altimeter and a tail wheel.

Jean Justeau has been a JPA team member for over 26 years.  Jean is the artist in resident of the Dark Sky Station. This beautiful work is called Ascender Rising.

Just what we do on Saturdays.

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Here’s the basic structures for Away 43, 44 and 45.  Two of these high racks are destine for another TV commercial and the third is for a small rocket launch system.  All will be PongSat carriers.

Today we’re putting carbon edges on ten foam decks. These are going into five high racks, our standard platform. We’re starting to build vehicles in small production runs instead of one at a time. I can’t wait till we start doing that with Ascenders.

Things are getting a bit crazy. There are twenty internal projects currently underway and two commercial flights on deck.

Here is a set of sketches of some of the projects. It’s a real mix, systems, experiments and vehicles. A few are complete and waiting for flight, some have already been flown and are being upgraded, some have six months to go. They all have been started and have real hardware in the shop.

The ABC News10 story aired and is on line:

http://www.news10.net/news/story.aspx?storyid=71305&catid=2

Dale did an awesome job on the story!!

Dale Schornack at News10 the Sacramento ABC station has done a news piece on JPA and the Toshiba chair commercial. The piece will air on the 11pm newscast on channel 10 in the greater Sacramento and central valley area. These sometimes get picked up nationally. If you see it let me know.

You will also be able to watch it on their website after it airs:  www.news10.net

They’ve running previews for it on the 11pm news cast all this week.  There should be some good “making of” video that hasn’t been seen before.