followinggte: The small gray airship model you see on my website was originally designed to fly for about 3 hours. It was never intended to be the full size Strat. The purpose of this smaller airship was to fly to high altitude for a brief period of time to allow Uli to test his electronics. He was tackling the problem of extreme cold affecting his circuit boards at high altitude. There was no question about the circuits working, he wanted to attain a regulated temperature that would protect his equipment from the extreme cold at all times.
One part in particular was of concern; the electrolytic capacitors. They are liquid inside and could freeze thereby shorting out the ciruit. I think Uli was going to install some large resistors that would generate sufficient heat needed to protect the equipment.
Huff also wanted to test endurance as well as station keeping ability. The design was modified to accommodate this. This meant that the construction costs would increase since we would need a complete photovoltaic array as opposed to a few test panels.
One delay was caused by the PV company because their production run was scheduled several months in advance and we would be placed on a waiting list. Do you see the kind of unanticipated delays we experienced? This is probably why the Strat II test model has been delayed.
Another delay had to do with procurement of the electrical control escapements. They had to be specially designed for the airship. You can see them in the photo as light blue and white boxes. (I think that is what they are)
We had purchased every square yard of 1.5 ounce Dacron that Aircraft Spruce had in its' warehouse and it still wasn't enough. It is my understanding that the NASA modified Strat was covered in Tedlar. They may have gotten tired of trying to locate Dacron and went to the better covering material instead. Delay, delay, delay!
I hope the aforementioned answers your question.
No man should be considered totally useless....because he can always serve as a bad example.
