Saturday 30 November 2013

Twas the night before Launch Day...

Final preparations are underway and we are all systems go, ready for our STRATODEAN Three launch at approximately 10:00am tomorrow. Please see here for radio tracking information - if you just want to follow it on a map please see here! You may have noticed that this latest launch has a distinctly festive theme with a few famous faces on board. Therefore we really appreciate all your tracking help, fingers crossed for a successful flight and retrieval! Don't worry - Rudolph is getting an early night.

The wearing of Christmas jumpers whilst tracking STRATODEAN Three, aka Santa Sleigh Test, aka STRATOSanta, is fully encouraged.


Monday 25 November 2013

Santa's pre-Christmas sleigh test

OK so the first planned date of this launch didn't go well after a mix up with the CAA and our approval for launch. This was certainly disappointing, however truth be told we were a little short on time to put all the finishing touches to the payload - so this could be a blessing in disguise. We used the time this weekend instead to make improvements! We have also made the brave decision to tell you all about it before we launch! :)

So it's November 25th and with a month to go, Santa and Rudolf have just been finishing off the modifications to their 2013 sleigh. Like all good engineers, Santa has opted to test the new changes before rolling it out into production and he has come to STRATODEAN for help! (It's been a very well kept secret that we provide technical facilities to all our famous mythical friends. The Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny are already well established customers.)

He gave us a clear project remit - for us to take him up and down on our payload to allow him to test the new handling abilities of his sleigh. Apparently the cost of reindeer propulsion (magic flying dust) has skyrocketed in the last few years and he can only justify the once a year purchase for Christmas due to Mrs Clauses' bingo habit and the increasing Elf wages. Furthermore, for this test he can only bring Rudolf as the other reindeer are getting on a bit and they need to save their knees.

We drew up a plan -
STRATODEAN Santa handling test v1
Who else has a whiteboard in their dining room? :p
So the plan is simple, get Santa and Rudolf to the stratosphere, let them test their 2013 sleigh modifications, record the test and finally ensuring they get home safely as they have a job to do in a month - no pressure then!

Thursday 21 November 2013

Potential Launch of STRATODEAN Three this weekend! - POSTPONED

Potential STRATODEAN Three launch this weekend, as always - weather dependant! This will be the first use of our new tracker also.

This launch has a planned festive theme for video coming in December. Ho-Ho-Hope you like it! Trackers always appreciated. Tracking info can be found here.

Update:

Unfortunately we have had to postpone this launch. Will update when we can, we'll have more info on Monday.