Today we cut a fair whack of material, check out the cutting gallery for pics. We polished off a big roll of yellow and used all of the hyperlast we need to, we still have a fair lot of hyperlast left as well.

Here is a breakdown of the progress:

(The table isn’t working, I will have to fix it.)

D, E, F and K, L, M are panels where the points are. So far we are only cutting whole panels, when we finish cutting the (70) whole blue panels, we will be about 77% of the way through. After that its the tricky bit of points, plus the nomex (easy).The circular cutter (thanks Adam!!) has been great, so far we have only put 1 new blade in and we probably did that well before it was needed. We found that it was easy to cut through 20 layers at once.

The only yellow we have left is the big roll, which has around 217m left on it. I guess that we will have at least 150m of it left over, if not more. We probably have 20 or so meters of Hyperlast left as well.

Hopefully we should get at least the rest of the whole blue panels done early next week.

Next week I am looking at buying a car. I have found a few I like so after I go see the accountant I am going to get myself a car. This should make coming home much easier because I can always find at least 1 other person to split the fuel with, so it works out to a $35 trip is way once split.

Hopefully this means that I can come to all the normal balloon events as well.

Anyway, don’t forget to keep checking the gallery because I am adding new pictures all the time!

Sewing machines are a barrell of laughs.

I got some screws to mount the seam folder onto the machine on Friday, so I decided to mess around with the machine and see what I could make it do.

After a while of winding bobbins and threading up the machine I found that rather than sew, it wanted to be the first singer 212G to land on the moon. It was rocking and shaking all over the place.

So after a few hours of “setting up”, 2 things were concluded:

1. We need a new belt.
2. Unless we want the white thread to turn oily golden brown, we need to give the machine a good clean.

Oh and DAMN! I am not sure how many people have used a machine like this before but they get absolutely smoking (fast) when you put your foot down, I think some adjustments are in need to make it easier to manage the speed.

Today should see panels B + C cut.

Quick update.

Cutting has started, slowly.

Panel A has been cut, that was the easy one so now to start on the next panels.

I will upload some photos soon.

As far as deadlines go, with all the things coming up around here that I have to do, I doubt sewing will start before I leave, but theres always long weekends

A little bit of progress, I just whipped up the final design, its basically just the same things but tweaked a bit. Top arrow heads have moved down so they will be more visible from the ground and an extra panel was added in due to newer plans.

I forgot to mention my first minor stuff up, I told the plan making software that the Nomex was 1.5m in width like the fabric, but in fact it is just under 1.5m. Not a major problem, it just means that panel A will have to be cut out along the fabric not across it, there may be a tiny bit more waste but I doubt it.

We were in Melbourne for a day on Tuesday so took the oppurtunity to buy some more bits, this included some vent rope andsewing machine bits like oil, needles and some screws. So far I am still under budget by a bit but there is three more (costly) things that need to be purchased.Firstly the nomex, I am looking at around $500 for this, secondly the cables, probably around $300 and finally the load tapes, which at the moment I have no idea.

Heres a photo of the vent rope, yes its not red, get over it.

The 20th deadline is looking a bit less reachable at the moment, I forgot to factor into that the fact that ALL the rest of this week is out. NO cutting out has started, but if I am lucky I may get a few of the basic panels done before this weekend.

I have a deadline now which is not for the balloon, but for me. I have to move into International House (University College) on the 23rd, after that all balloon work is either on long weekends or holidays.

Scobie (Dad) and myself made a probably somewhat more achievable goal, to fly the balloon at Leeton this easter. So at the moment thats what we are realistically aiming for.

I am sure you readers (if there is many) are getting sick of all this talk and no action, so next week I promise you will start to see some seams done

The basic patterns were done tonight.

When I say basic, I mean the patters for the whole 15 panels in a gore, what isn’t cut is the patterns for the arrow tips or the parachute.

Hopefully we can get all the fabric cut by the end of the week, then that gives me 24 days to sew it up.
I am still not sure whether that is a long time or not. I mean, thinking about actually sewing makes me think if I worked all (say, 10 hours roughly) day I should be able to get at least 3 gores done. Keep in mind I have never sewn anything like this before so have no idea of how long it takes, but even if I hit my target of 3 gores a day, thats 7 days for sewing the gores. Then for sewing the vertical gores, that in my mind seems easier as there is less stopping and starting, so I am guessing I could get 4 vertical seams done a day.

If I reach these randomly thought out targets, that is about 12 days for sewing, so who knows I might get it test inflated before the 20th. Actually, I have just decided thats my goal, a test inflation before the 20th. I don’t care if its not got a COA or registered before I leave, as long as its a single (rigged) bag of fabric which inflates. The stuff after that is all minor in comparison to the sewing I think.

Heres a picture of the finished basic patterns, the bottom (nomex) panel is on the top.

Check out the Cutting gallery for some pictures of the space I will be using to cut/sew, its quite big, and air conditioned too.

Well its been over a month since my last post. I have been very busy, not really with balloon stuff, but more with general things. I got accepted into the university course I wanted to get into, Computer Systems at RMIT so I will be moving to Melbourne on the 24th.

This creates a bit of a problem, I always thought I would have to leave around that date, but I now realise how much less time I will have to build.

I am sure I could cut a sew in a month, if thats all I was doing, but there is so much else I need to organise, and eventually I need to start packing which is going to be bad, so while there is lots of time to go, not all of it can be spent on building.

I am starting to have doubt whether it will get finished or not, if it doesn’t, I will just be coming home regularly until its done. I may get the sewing done in time, but I don’t know about the rest, like airworthiness, riggint and test inflation.

Anyway I will post something thats actually interesting just after this.

 Results:
Results came in this morning at 7am. I needed around 72-75 and was blown away with 82.30!!! So it looks like I will be coming to University down in Melbourne.

New Toy:
I have been watching eBay quietly for a while now, and picked up this baby for $1450au shipped.

It’s a Motion LE1600 with outdoor display and extended battery pack, also has had a screen protector on since birth so the screen has no scratches which was a good sale point for me.

It needs a bit of a wipe over (wax Crayola marks on the left), an reformat but then it should be good. I am also going to install a 8gb SSD hard drive into it, which will actually be an 8gb compact flash card, the benefits of this are less power, handle more vibration, no moving parts and faster.

I am on my new server so need to fix a few things before I can upload more pics to the gallery but for now here it is:

Not too much balloon building related has been happening lately.

The fabric has been on its way to me for 4 days now, but due to “peak time” it won’t arrive until the 22nd. Next Saturday I leave for Christmas holidays until about new years, so I am going to have a lot less time than I originally planned (about 1/3rd), probably about a month, but seeing as I have nothing much else to do in that time, I don’t think its unachievable, if I can average 5-8 hours a day it could be done in a fortnight. (I am sure I will laugh at that optimistic statement in a months time. :D)

The thread arrived late last week, its just plain boring white, size 69 (ironic?) Bonded Polyester thread.

As far as buying other bits go, the only bits not sorted yet are the brown paper, nomex, carabiners (I am looking for a special kind) and crown ring. The rest of the bits will come from either the marine shop or a sewing/craft shop.

One thing thats being difficult is the load tape, I contacted Arnold Webbing but the gave me the runaround and said they would contact me. Then I was contacted by some other company saying they were told to contact me by Arnold Webbing. These new guys seem to be a retailer for Arnold Webbing, but with the tape being ~$0.52 per meter I don’t think its hardly a good price for the 800-1000m I want. I did tell them to send me some real prices but I *may* have to find another place to get them. I am still stumped as to why Arnold Webbing couldn’t sell to me, surely 1000m is not such a tiny quantity?
(If anyone has any ideas on where to get some, please leave a comment.)

I have a new “toy” arriving tomorrow, its for ballooning and heavily geek related. I will post up some more when I get it.

I am hoping to get my hands on some brown paper early next week to start cutting out patterns, I at least want to get them done before I go away. I was doing a quick count earlier and found I need approx. 23 unique panels (that’s if I can mirror some panels for the LHS/RHS of arrow heads, I think I should be able to).

VCE Results come out at 7am tomorrow. These results pretty much determine whether I am going to University or not so semi-important, not sure if I am feeling confident but not much i can do now

I have updated the money page with pretty much everything I plan to get, the estimated price is higher than I thought but maybe I will be able to cut a few things down to reduce that.

http://balloonbuildingblog.com/money/

There is still a few things I haven’t included which I will probably see at the sewing sewing shop and decide I need, like a rotary cutter and other tools.

The two big costs which I was forgetting about was the import fee’s and the nomex, those alone will probably break $2000