Perlan’s blog collects the thoughts and experiences of team members from the multiple disciplines needed to build and prepare the aircraft, plan the flight, and carry out the mission. Here, you’ll find insights from the designers, craftspeople, pilots, meteorologists, and support personnel who will make Perlan’s record ascents a reality. Perlan’s blog will be an opportunity to delve into the challenges and triumphs that travel with the giant sailplane.
Coming from Australia and having flown in the United States, I am used to seeing “big” skies. The kinds of places where multi-terawatts of energy are going up into the clouds and just begging for a glider to siphon off a few kilowatts. [I will always remember seeing the ground just fall away from me in Australia once.]
The Perlan Project has held its major team meeting for the year, in the Bend, Oregon workshop where the new glider is under construction. The team members got together to see the progress in the workshop and make some important decisions for the next steps.
The most important decision in this meeting was Dennis will ship his glider down to Argentina for the November-December flying season so that we can get some experience flying safely and legally in Argentina. Dennis owns a DG1001M glider, which is the perfect glider for this kind of flying.
Yesterday at Windward Performance a TV crew came out to prepare a piece on the Perlan Project.
The Perlan build process is now up to full speed with many molds, jigs and parts under construction together. The team in the workshop is now more than twenty people. This recent photo doesn’t even show them all!
This two-minute video explains a little bit about the rebreather system we are planning to use and why it is so useful to us. Watch the video on YouTube here.
It’s the 24th of February, the day before a big day in the Perlan Project. Some came by air, in an ASH25 glider, no less. Most of the team has met up in preparation for tomorrow.
Ed Warnock, our Executive Director, has visited the workshop in Bend and has the following report. Photos by John Miller.
Fabulous Progress!
I was amazed at the progress since we were there last. It is visually quite impressive.
Wings
The main shop is completely filled with wing construction and a second shop is mostly full with Perlan parts and equipment. As the foam plugs are being assembled and aligned you can see clearly the massive size and area of the wings.
Closeout tooling
The rebreather system has been rebuilt into its 4th configuration. This is going to be used for testing as it is very close to the final flight configuration. Now that we have access to a suitable frezer, we can do our “cold tests” to check that there are no problems with ice build-up.
The photos show Roger Tanner, our chief pilot, sitting in the test seat. Most of the real changes on the rebreather are out of sight below his left elbow.