The Perlan 2 glider will have a nice warm home in El Calafate thanks to the Aero Club Lago Argentino. Freddy Representaciones and German Muller have taken good care of the Perlan Project. The winter sunrise at the airport is 9:30 am. Can't wait to see the...
In El Calafate, Tago is Perlan Project's chief of logistics. He was interviewed by the radio show "Ahora Calafate." With him were Freddy Vergnolle and German Muller from the local aero club. They will be our hosts at the airport. En El Calafate intentarán...
The Perlan 2 glider will be the "best dressed" glider in all of Argentina! Clouddancer Covers enthusiastically took our drawings and diagrams and created these fabulous covers. They will make crewing so much easier for this one-of-a-kind sailplane! Perlan soars...
As you might imagine, this expedition to Patagonia takes an amazing amount of preparation. For the past months, Greg Scates has provided expertise in carbon fiber work inside the glider. Now Greg has shifted to welding to prepare the container for ocean...
How sweet it is!!! The photo is from tail camera at 26,000 feet with southern half of Lake Tahoe in bottom right corner. The volunteer Perlan Team based in Minden has worked incredible hours to get the Perlan 2 glider ready to go to Argentina. Only two milestones...
A monumental undertaking was to create an in-flight flutter excitation and telemetry system. The reason is to verify the flutter model developed by ATA. Since wave weather can be infrequent, we don't want to land while the flutter data is analyzed, then wait...
Because a small town like El Calafate has no crane to lower the container off the truck, Jim and Greg designed a simple but strong lift device with a chain hoist. Times four. They have been built and tested to lift a corner of the currently empty container. Start with...
On March 24-25 Smithsonian's Air & Space photographer Chad Slattery was in Minden to get some pictures of Perlan 2. We had to promise to not put anything on our blog page until the actual magazine was published. It was fun to work with Chad and observe his...
At 0430 PDT on May 20 the Perlan team returned to the hangar for another wave flight. The weather forecasts conflicted so it was a gamble which paid off. We got the flight off before any undesired crosswinds showed up. Jim & Miguel soared to FL208 and added...
On May 19th Minden FINALLY had wave. We were super excited at the chance to see if the incredible efforts by the Perlan-Mindenites would pay off. We arrived at the hangar literally before the crack of dawn. Dennis and Cindy were the first to launch in his DG 1001....
At the end of a successful campaign there are many people to thank. First is all the team members who traveled to El Calafate taking from 3 weeks to 3 months out of their busy lives. Each one of us put the mission above our personal lives and it is deeply...
On September 15 the Perlan team finished loading the container. It takes some preparation to get everything in the proper place and tightly secured. The Perlan 2 goes into its special built Cobra trailer. In one photo perhaps you can see Loris' shoes as he checks the...
Perlan 2 has a unique system to communicate with the ground. We call our ground station Cap Comm shortened for Capsule Communication. The software program was written by Tom Payne with Morgan Sandercock. Tom wrote a very robust program that could accept our...
On September 10 when Hurricane Irma was bashing Florida the Perlan team kept close watch on Sarastoga, Florida home of Perlan pilot Miguel Iturmendi. Miguel was home with his family. We are happy to report no significant damage to his family, house or hangar. Ken...
On September 9, 2017 Perlan 2 again went wave searching with Jim Payne and Tim Gardner at the controls. The Airbus Perlan Mission II ground team prepped the glider the day before. The forecasts were not strong but there would be wave. The balloon team gathered fresh...
Airbus Perlan Mission II tail camera photo from 54,000 feet (pressure altitude). Watch the Perlan 2 tail camera video as Morgan Sandercock takes the controls above 52,000 feet and tries out the handling qualities of Perlan 2. Jim Payne says "it flies better above...