Boo, I got a back up plan to the back up plan. To back up my back up plan.

Our testing location and helium order both fell through so I had to get creative. Last night I scouted out a parking garage riiiiggghhhht before it got dark and today we have the PERFECT spot for our last day of drop testing.

Everyone is wearing their best rainproof business casual attire.

It is C-O-L-D and drizzly...a stark contrast to the hot and sunny weather of a day or two ago. It's good though...it gives our space dongle (atmospheric probe) something to do.

After dropping into a bunch of pedestrians I am thrilled to have an empty and protected space where we can work.

Everyone has their system. Everyone is communicating well and working hard. Despite the frigid temps and the ongoing rain my team remained upbeat. And after they had gone home and showered they were all back on the computer processing data, uploading videos and doing analysis. I hit the jackpot.

Jimmy engineered a rigging system to get the payload train away from obstacles and a mechanism to make it release on command. We were also thankful for the addition of a line to pull everything back up with....7 flights is a lot of stairs.

If the chute gets tangled during the Caramore maneuver and doesn't deploy from 80 ft up....you're gonna crunch your hull.

When the hull can't be taped to death anymore what do you do? Do you go home? Nope. You make a hull out of a grocery bag and keep chucking those electronics.

American Tobacco Drop Testing

Our payload train works and our chute is bringing everything down safely. More wiring excitement today. Erick had to get David up to date on the code by spelling everything out phonetically over the phone. We also realized through extreme testing that we all need to wear more sunscreen. Additionally, we need whistles.

Aggressive Testing

Now we have our Big Red Bee up and running and I am watching Jimmy drive home on APRS.fi.  Testing for that system and the "pinger" are going well.

With the LRR under our belts we have a lot of work to do so the meetings have gone from planning to building. Equipment is coming in from Amazon Prime every day so we've added a new storage system....The Unacceptable Risks Telemetry, Radios, Electronics and Supplies (TURTLES) to go with The Unacceptable Risks Device Storage (TURDS.)

We also have a new itty bitty SD card box. But no one ever has a mini USB cable.

The Polimaster is in!!

Dan has a new batch of hulls for us to destroy during drop testing this week. I can't wait!

This may be "supper" heavy duty but we are not sending it to space. 

The Canon is nestled all snug in its bed. 

Since our drops got cancelled at American Tobacco because of the weather, we were worried we'd also miss our dinner plans....but opted to eat at the Mellow Mushroom in Chapel Hill anyway!

Since we were testing during the week a lot of gear was changing hands and it was difficult to keep track of the team. 

Software benchmark and cryo testing is going well. We find a problem and then Erick fixes it. We find a problem and then David fixes it. We find a problem and then Erick and David fix it together. Sometimes it can be frustrating troubleshooting all of these things and it can feel like no progress is being made...but at the end of the day you can step back and see how every little wiring snafu or bug that gets fixed is actually making the project stronger and safer. In order to know that it works we have to do our best to try to break it. (So we shouldn't be too sad when we sucessfully break it.)

Tomorrow we are going to the American Tobacco Campus to drop these thing off of much taller buildings. This time we'll be dropping the Arduino instead of eggs!