A few days ago I picked up the polystyrene boxes which will be used for the housing, and they were perfect. I’ve had some ideas on how to make the box, but it is tricky, because I want to try and make the opening for the lens wide enough so that the camera doesn’t capture the hole opening, like it did in the previous launch. Also, I want to try and place the camera at a 30° down angle, so that it can capture more of the earth. In order to achieve these two objectives, I am going to try and make a template for the camera’s FOV, then spray Polyurethane around a model camera that I make out of Polystyrene, which will hopefully make for a nice, rigid and insulated holder for the camera.
Since this is a lot of trial and error, I’ve been focusing more on trying to get Helium for the upcoming launch from the Airport, as Rian doesn’t think that the Hydrogen generator will be up and running before then. My dad found a company called My Gas, who rents out helium, however I had no idea that helium cost so much, so I decided to see if I could get some kind of discount by explaining my situation. Also, it seemed that a regulator needed to be bought, which would cost almost half of the cost of the helium, which seemed ludicrous, so I sent them an email for clarity.
The woman I spoke to (Bianca) very kindly offered me a discount and after a bit of paperwork yesterday, I told her we would come and pick up the 50l helium tank, along with the regulator later that day.
When we arrived, I saw the tank and realized that we would have a problem fitting it into our little Polo, as it was absolutely massive. It was also incredibly heavy, despite the fact that it had enough helium to take cameras to the edge of space multiple times. However I managed to fit the tank into the car and we made our way home.
When we got back, I went to check what my dad had been working on, and found that the tracker that we got from Paulo and Jason the other day was working perfectly, despite a few hiccups with the programming. I had taken the tracker with me in the car and left it on the entire time, and on the screen we could see the exact path we took going to My Gas and back.
During the next few days, I will move back into hardware mode, as I need to build the second parachute, build the housing, test the cameras and add swivels to the join points, in an attempt to try and reduce the amount of spinning, which will make for better photos.
