Category: July

Over the past few days I have been mainly focusing on the housing design for the cameras and trackers, and I found a company in Port Elizabeth who make polystyrene boxes, and who would be able to send down a few by truck, which should be arriving tomorrow some time.

However today I went to Takealot to pick up some new headphones, and on the way back took a drastic detour via Plattekloof to meet up with Paulo, who had the GPS unit Jason was talking about. After meeting Paulo and thanking him, I inspected the unit and discovered it to be lighter than the radiosonde, which is really helpful. Continue reading “All Directions”

Yesterday I went around to Timothy’s house to buy some Ripstop Nylon. If possible I wanted to try and get some orange material, as I kind of liked the look of that colour parachute. After some looking around, we found some that was more or less the right size and shape I was looking for. I worked out that a piece that size should come to around R600, and when I tried to pay, Timothy just asked that I make a mention of him on my Facebook page. In addition to the copious generosity, he gave me some tips on how to improve my parachute design, by not using seam tape, but rather a French seam where the panels are joined, and by cutting a hole in the top of the parachute, which will add stability to the decent and will save some weight, at little expense to the decent rate. Yet again I was thanking people who were so generous in the donations to this project, and I plan to make a big fuss of them when there are lots of eyes on my, so that I can really express my gratitude.

After school today, I met with Thomas Knemeyer who wanted to know all about my project. He said that he wanted to take it to the media, and I accepted graciously, as this is something that I had wanted to do, but had no idea of how to go about doing it. After a brief conversation and some fact checking, he said he will try and make it to my launch on Friday, and can potentially write up something for the papers. As he was leaving, he gave me a sizeable donation in American dollars, which took me by surprise. After many thanks we parted ways and I went to go and wait for Brandon, as we had organized to meet after my meeting with Thomas. Continue reading “Communications”

I got home from school today to a mass of notifications from the Facebook post I had done. It had over 25 shares, nearly 100 likes, comments galore and an estimated 10k views. It seems the post reached all corners of the earth with teachers from Canada, Australia and Europe congratulating me and saying they would share it with their year 12’s. I also received phone calls and emails, as well as personal messages regarding the project, some of which were to congratulate, others who wanted to sponsor in some way, and others who just wanted to be a part of it.

To be honest it was rather overwhelming… Continue reading “Oh Boy (Again)”

I started off the day with an Indiegogo update and a Facebook post with the photos from the launch. Since it was already late in the morning, as soon as I finished this it was time to go into town to buy the G15.

The camera in question is a Canon PowerShot G15 and was my first choice when looking for cameras to buy. However all the prices for this camera were way outside of my price range, sitting at around R3000 or more. However, when posting my ad for the SX430IS on Gumtree, I saw a G15 going for R1500, which is unheard of. I set up a meet with the seller in town, so that is where I went first. Continue reading “Public Relations”

Since I didn’t everything done that I wanted to yesterday, the workload for today was a lot bigger. However it was still attainable. When I got home, the first course of action taken was testing the parachute shape. This was done by just running up and down the garden with it trailing behind me. The parachute passed, meaning that the second phase of testing had the go-ahead. Continue reading “Final Touches”

Chaos. I think that perfectly describes going back to school. Today I had a plan. The plan was:

1. Wake up in time for school
2. Get to school before 8am
3. Get home at 3pm
4. Finish building the parachute
5. Make the housing for the camera
6. Test the parachute
7. Hack the Canon cameras
8. Test the battery life
9. Finish building the Tracker 2.0 UI
10. Test it with the tracker and tracking station I have
11. Install all software needed on to the laptop that will sit at Intermet
12. Finish everything in time to watch an episode of TV before getting to bed by 10pm.

Continue reading “Back to School Chaos”