High altitude experiment a SUCCESS!!!

On the 31st of December I launched the Black Sky project payload with two HD cameras. I recovered the rig ~240km away downrange (320km on the highway) in excellent condition from a hill in a remote area.
I wasn't able to use the NewTrent external battery for extra camera videotaping time so the 2:20 h video cuts out before the balloon burst at about 30-33km.

I used a 1600g balloon with a SPOT GPS tracker for the recovery.
I will submit a more detailed post after the 16GB in flight video is edited and uploaded to youtube, the ''payload'' was a LEGO space shuttle.


THE VIDEO I GOT BACK IS FANTASTIC!

Update

I am happy to announce that I've received funding for launching a small payload on a weather balloon to ~35 km altitude and film the entire flight using a Go Pro Hero HD camera. The project is expected to be completed within 24 days of this posting .
Special thanks to my friend Steve Sammartino for the support.

This is what I'm aiming for:

Intake Rings

I made the 1st part of the re-designed jet engine starter on my lathe, the hardest part was turning a 3.5mm radius, without any cutting tool to do that I used a pice of 20x20x1.5mm AISI 304 that I drilled with a 7 mm drillbit. Afterwards I just cut the hole in half and filed a sharp edge. The tool was quite inefficient but it did an awsome job on the soft 6000 series aluminum. I made 3 rings untill I got it to 0.02mm error which was ''too-exact'' but when I bought the lathe I decided to aim for nothing less than pefect with the parts I make and get the max out of my machine-tool.
For the 6 M3x0.5 holes I used Rhinocerous CAD to printout an exact 1:1 of the hole layout on cardbord then used it as a template.

Glider flying competition

On the 15th of octomber I participated in a glider competition for on-spot landing and overall corect flight (ranking each step of a standard runway tour: winch takeoff, flightpath, glideslope, landing etc.) in which I won 1st place ahead of 15 other pilots. Last time it was held 2 years ago(my 1st year) I got 3rd place which makes me prowd of the my overall skill.

Recently bought SN320 lathe

After significant hussle I managed to get the SN320 lathe I was talking about earlier. I had to hire a large forklift to transport it on public roads and get 4 people to push it in, after that I hired an electrician to wire it up and a lathe mechanic to tune the clutch. All in all it took about a week and although I only have 2 knifes I already started making some chips and I can allready say I'm in love with machining!!!
Unfortunately I only got 2 live centers for it and a 200mm 3 jaw chuck so I got quite a bit of collecting untill I can machine real parts.

Getting a lathe!

I will soon be back to work because of generous people like Markus Bindhammer, and the folks at ARCA without them my work wouldn't be possible so I wish to thanke them again with this opportunity. In 2 weeks time I will buy a second hand romanian lathe from the late 80's named SN-320.
Basic parameters:
Swing over bed: 320 mm
Distance between centers: 750 mm
Through hole: 34 mm
Power: 3 kW 380V motor
Mobile center has a morse nr. 3
Weight: 900kg
It comes with a 200mm 3 jaw chuck, 80 mm mobile rest and 100 mm steady rest, dead center, live center, and hopefully some cutting tools!

Things I need to buy extra: 4 independent jaw chuck, drillbits, an array of cutting tools, taps, reamers, dial indicator with support, 2 micrometers, a good digital caliper, thread indicator and a lot of things I'm not even aware of right now.
This is how the SN320 looks like: