The Perlan Project is very close to completely self-contained pressurized wave flight. We have test flown the sealed hatches using Mountain High EDS cannulas, but the last critical milestone was installing the (Darth Vader) rebreathers.
The BioMarine rebreathers needed to be mounted out of the way inside the cockpit but easily removed after each flight. Cockpit space is at a premium, indeed. Jim called our recently retired Rosamond neighbor, Greg Scates, to come up to Minden and perform some of his carbon fiber magic. He did lay-ups, vacuumed bagged and built a curing oven. The rear instrument panel had scads of room between the back of the front seat until the back of the rear instruments. Greg cut off that rear instrument panel (used elsewhere now) and built a new back. The round mounting plate of one rebreather can now go in that unused space. The other rebreather will be attached to the forward pilot’s seat back. Doug Perrenod and Stewart Tattersall were there to assist. Miguel got Greg to do some mods in the simulator while Greg was here.
Our Life Support Systems Display LSSD is unique to Perlan. Tom Payne and Tim Gardner are both computer engineers by trade. Tom was here for a couple of days and added several pages to the display and added other enhancements and updates. All parts of the code are now playing nicely together! March 2016
