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A Parachute Is Made

Today I woke up at 8am so that I could get to the seamstress by 8:30. When I arrived, I found that she had already hemmed down three of the twelve panels. I told her the new plan that my dad and I came up with the night before: instead of sewing the holding lines into the hemming, it would be cheaper and more efficient to rather make a little loop at the end of each seam, which we could then feed the holding lines though and splice them back on themselves which would be much stronger. This would also mean that we could do the lines ourselves and if they broke or there was a problem with them, it would be simple to fix. Continue reading “A Parachute Is Made”

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Parachute Beginnings

Due to all the running around yesterday, I only got home at around 7pm, so was unable to start working on the parachute. This was fine, until I realized that I had forgotten the to buy the cord for the holding lines yesterday. To make matters worse, I found out that Denise in Bergvliet didn’t have the seam tape that I needed, so I would have to buy that as well. So due to bad planning, yesterday was a total disaster. Continue reading “Parachute Beginnings”

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Run Around

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. Continue reading “Run Around”

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Soft Landings

Over the past two days, I have been trying to work on my journal as much as I can, as I am falling behind with the amount of content that I am trying to capture. I still need to get my website up, I need to start on my research project, I need to start planning the future launches and assigning objectives to them, I need to try and further publicize my Indiegogo campaign, and on top of all that, I need to learn how to build a parachute and then actually build one. Sigh. Continue reading “Soft Landings”

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A New Approach

Today while I was typing away at my journal, my dad started something behind my back (I mean he sits behind me, so it couldn’t have happened any other way). When I took a break, he showed me what he had been working on: a new tracking solution. Based on the experience we had with the launch yesterday and how the laptop almost died before we’d even reached the N2, we decided that it would be best to find alternate methods of using the Radiosondes that didn’t require the Laptop until it was absolutely necessary. Continue reading “A New Approach”

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Indiegogo

Something else was completed today, aside from building software to interface with Google Earth and tracking the balloon in virtual 3D space in real time: I went live on my Indiegogo campaign.

After getting the reply from HotWired, saying that the box would cost about R2000 to make, I decided it was time to start a crowed funding campaign which could hopefully earn something. Without having any previous experience with running a campaign, I dived right in and see where the process would take me. After my previous research on the different crowdfunding platforms, I knew that Indiegogo would be the best option, so I headed over to their site and clicked “Start a campaign”. This took me to an option page to choose between a project or a cause. Since this is a project that I am working on, and not a charity, I clicked up fundraiser and continued. Continue reading “Indiegogo”