Our project meteorologist Elizabeth Austin took this picture of lenticular clouds over her house in Nevada yesterday. Lenticulars are important to glider pilots because they only occur when there is wave activity. Sometimes the wave might be too weak to support a...
The mold-building process has begun on the horizontal tailplane. This is the first of the “flying” aerodynamic parts to be started. It is proceeding in exactly the same way as the fuselage. First we cut a foam block with the CNC machine, then sand and paint it to make...
The first high-temperature carbon fibre mold has been seperated from its plug. It has turned out perfectly with no defects.
Today we completed three big milestones towards constructing the airplane. One fuselage forward-half mold has been infused with epoxy resin The hatch test box has passed its pressure+cold test We pressurised a test double-paned window to destruction just to see what...
The second test box has now been completed. This box is intended to test the hatch with pressure and cold. This is a process of iterative design and testing. The first test box showed that the fixed-window design is adequate but the box itself failed. This new one has...
The rebreather system development is continuing. We have sucessfully tested some more refinements to the design. Jeff Bozanic has been invaluable, contributing expertise and identifying some diving hardware which will be useful to us. James Murray, Jeff Bozanic and...
The fuselage plugs have been painted in their final coat of paint. There is still a lot more sanding and surface preparation before we can start construction of the mold.
As predicted last week, testing the window with full pressure and cold temperature has blown up the test box with no damage to the window. The test box was filled with offcuts of blue foam and sealed up. More blue foam was placed on top to hold the dry ice. The dry...
We pressurised a test window for the first time today. We ran it up to the full design pressure although we did not test the (higher) proof pressure. There were no leaks and no problems with the window. I expect we will find that the window is unbreakable. The test...
Jim Murray and Pat McLaughlin have been working on phase 2 of the project for several months now. We have only just gotten around to adding them to the “team” page on the web site. Patrick is the owner of Mountain High, which makes the best oxygen systems available...
Argentine Organizational Supporters of Perlan Sandra Sandercock is Perlan’s liason with Argentina governmental organizations. She was busy in the months leading up to our time in Argentina setting up future meetings and completing the necessary documents. During the...
Loading Day and Last Team Dinner With Monday morning’s sunrise the Perlan was in the trailer, the container was ready for inspection, the Egrett was ready to start the long ferry home, the Tribal truck was at the airport and the crane was booked for the afternoon. For...
Farewell Argentina Multiple weather studies for the next week did not show stratospheric waves of sufficient strength to soar to high altitude. So we made the tough, bittersweet decision to pack up and return to Minden. In El Calafate in 2023 Airbus Perlan Mission II:...
For the third and final blog on Support Teams for Airbus Perlan Mission II we look at several team members who wear many hats. Of special note are the words from our 3 Perlan Interns and their observations about their past two months in El Calafate. Argentine Liason –...
Perlan Support Teams – Part Two As I said in Part One we are so fortunate to have such diverse talent on our team to support Airbus Perlan Mission II. This blog is to highlight each team member’s supporting role in their own words. Most have been on multiple Argentina...
Perlan Project Support Teams - Part One Airbus Perlan Mission II is incredibly fortunate to have a team of dedicated volunteer specialists. It takes a huge amount of work to put Perlan 2 into the air to safely hunt for stratospheric wave. These support teams are the...