This morning I contacted The Cottage Shop, which is a tailor shop in Bergvliet, run from home by the owner, Denise. I explained my situation, that I wanted to make a parachute, and she said I could bring the stuff around today for her to see. Knowing that I still needed to acquire 90% of the items needed to construct said parachute, asked if tomorrow morning would be available, so I have enough time to buy everything and cut out the material. Denise said that was fine and she’d see me tomorrow.
As I was getting ready to go out and buy everything that was needed, my brother told me he needed a lift to Claremont for an event with friends. This was in the complete opposite direction to where I needed to go, however I knew there was no other way.
After dropping off my brother, I headed off to Rope World in search of Polyester seam tape, as that is what the instructions for building a parachute suggested. I didn’t have that many options and the one I finally went for was rather heavy, which was not all that great.
Knowing that my cash flow was limited as my budget was running on empty, I decided to prioritize the next items I bought in order of importance. The next most important thing on my list was camera protection to go inside the housing. For the first real launch, I plan to use a DIY housing solution, as the costs of the manufactured housing are too steep at the moment. In order to fully protect the cameras, I needed something soft to wrap around the camera. This ended up being a foam mattress-like material that was quite similar to Sondor, which I bought from Builders Warehouse. Since the only thickness they had was 10mm, I also got some contact glue and a sharp craft knife so that I could make the pieces I needed easily.
While wondering around Builders, I suddenly realized that I didn’t have anything to keep the cameras warm. Since the Warehouse didn’t stock heat packs, a quick Google yielded a company in Muizenberg called Be Safe Paramedical, which apparently stocked them. On the way to them however, there was stop go traffic all the way into Muizenberg and it took over an hour to get there. This was rather annoying to and to make matters worse, when I got there they told me that they only had one left in stock, and it was at their warehouse, which was right next to Builders Warehouse. Where I had just been. However they did phone ahead to tell the guys there to keep it for me.
The traffic on the way back had cleared up and I was at the warehouse in 20 minutes, mostly because I got lost when navigating the many warehouses there. Once I arrived, the buying process was quick and easy and I was back in the car in minutes. The next item of priority was a Polystyrene box that had better shape than the one bought at Merrypak a few weeks ago. This was not essential, but since I was in the area I thought I’d see if anyone had.
The first place I checked was Wrap and Pack a few blocks from where I was. The smallest size they had was big enough to fit a person in, which was not the size I was looking for. For this mission anyway… Next I tried Plastics Emporium across the street. They were more helpful, as they said that they had stocked them a while back, but not for some time. However one woman was very nice and said she’d look in the back of the store to see if there were any lying around that they hadn’t managed to sell. But alas, there were none. So on to the next place I went.
Mambos told me they do supply them and should have in stock, however when reaching the aisle, an employee told me someone had taken all of the remaining ones just under an hour ago. Just my luck. However they told me I could try Value Baking Supplies just up the road.
They did not have any either. They had never even heard of a Polystyrene cooler box. This was not good. But it was getting late and I still needed to get to three more places before closing time.
The next stop was Fabric World in Wynberg, where I was looking for Ripstop Nylon. I knew they wouldn’t have, but it didn’t hurt to try, and I thought someone may have known someplace I could get it locally, that wasn’t advertised on the internet. However they didn’t have, nor knew of anyone who did. With a sigh I once more returned to my reliable steed and we headed off again.
The last stop of the day before I could lay down and rest was Constantia Village where I needed to print out two templates of the parachute panels, one for the outer cutting and one for the inner markings.
Once that was done I just needed to do a quick shop for my parents and then I got to go home at last. Due to the fact that I got home really late and was dead tired, I gave myself a break and put off the parachute panel-cutting to the morning.
