The Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team is awaiting the arrival on Sunday of Pixhawk wrangler Linus Penzlien, and ahead of some planned tests during his visit we've knocked up a wooden platform to mount the Vulture 2 spaceplane atop a van.

Proper garden shed engineering, and here are a couple of video stills as the aircraft hit 100km/h on a first run.

There's more on the structure and the forthcoming Pixhawk custom mission parameters here.

We're very much obliged to Billy Bargagliotti of Memphis, Tennessee, for putting together an X-Plane model of our Vulture 2 spaceplane.

It's a work in progress, but advanced enough to give a flavour of how the aircraft handles, and indeed just what happens when you fire the rocket motor. Entertaining stuff.

As is obligatory with any High Altitude Ballooning (HAB) mission, magnetic trees have proved an irresistible attraction for the Vulture during the first few test flights. Here's an attempted manual landing just before arboreal intervention:

Suffice it say, we've moved future flights to the desert. There's more on Billy and the X-Plane Vulture 2 here.

We at the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission are delighted to welcome on board Linus Penzlien, well known to DIY Droners*, and who'll be lending a hand crafting custom mission parameters for our Vulture 2 spaceplane's Pixhawk autopilot.

Thanks to Andrew Tridgell for recommending Linus for the job. The Hamburg native will be flying out to Spain next month to get hands-on with the Vulture, and the results will no doubt be of interest to APM:Plane aficionados. It's going to be a team effort, and we'll keep you posted on just what coding magic is worked on our ballocket flight's autopilot. There's more on Linus right here.

*Is that the official term?

Bit of fun for those of you of a lyrical bent. We're working on an embroidered mission patch for our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project (first rough graphic above), and need a suitably stirring motto to go with it.

We've already got plenty of daft ideas from Register readers (and a few good ones too). If you fancy getting involved and perhaps winning one of the finished patches, there are details here. The deadline for submissions is Friday, so dust off your Latin dictionaries.

We've just installed the Pi in the Sky telemetry board in our Vulture 2 spaceplane, and while it's primarily for High Altitude Ballooning (HAB) missions, we're using it as part of our onboard Raspberry Pi rig.

It's a nifty bit of kit, combining GPS and radio transmitter. As well as beaming lo-res Raspberry Picam images from aloft via SSDV (Slow Scan Digital Video), it also allows hi-res stuff to be recorded to the Pi's SD card for later recovery.

Hats off to Dave Akerman and Anthony Stirk for this handy board, and there's more on our installation here.

As you can see, our plucky Playmonaut is back in his seat in the Vulture 2 spaceplane following some work on the aircraft's canards and servo linkages.

We had to swap out a servo after a recent minor melt-down, and took the chance to mount the canards properly. The fire department is on standby, just in case another servo motor goes up in smoke.

Here are the mounted forewings with the Pixhawk fired up...

...and for the viewing pleasure of those of an engineering bent, here's how we bolted them to the aircraft:

We describe the canards as "cantankerous" because they proved somewhat troublesome. The full story is right here.

From an appeal on the Register today: 

If you're a dab hand with X-Plane's Plane-Maker who just happens to fancy eternal internet glory as part of the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission, then today's your lucky* day.

We're inviting any bright spark who can turn our .SLDPRT CAD files into an X-Plane to get in touch.

The reward for this labour is the aforementioned glory, plus beer, quaffing of which TBA. Sadly, the bruised LOHAN budget doesn't allow greater recompense, and indeed our Playmonaut is complaining vociferously that we recently cancelled his hired stretch limo and bought him a second-hand bicycle.

Full story here. 

(*Our particular interpretation of the meaning of the word "lucky")

Having spent far too much time pondering just how to create an effective connection between our Vulture 2 spaceplane's rocket motor heater and its external LiPo and thermostat, we're obliged to the inspired Reg reader who came up with a classic KISS solution.

The problem was to have a hook-up which wouldn't disconnect as the aircraft made its way to altitude, but which also wouldn't impede the plane's launch.

We'd considered magnets, induction coils, microwave/laser links, etc, etc, but here's the garden shed solution: some lengths of 2mm copper tube with wires shoved into them:

So, the wires are firmly connected pre-launch, and then just fly out when the Vulture blasts off. There's more on this extremely cunning plan here.

Our Vulture 2 spaceplane's miniature pilot - the plucky Playmonaut - had a narrow escape earlier this week after one of the aircraft's servos went up in smoke during testing.

As you can see in the above photo, emergency teams rushed to the scene, while we were left to ponder what caused the meltdown. The remedy might require the old Zener clamping diode ploy, and if that's so, then we're pretty well done on finally firing up the fully-assembled vehicle.

Next on the agenda is getting the Pixhawk to talk to the onboard Raspberry Pi, after which its mission parameter programming time, which promises to be a stiff-brandy-heavy task.

We recently tested a couple of Replay XD cameras on a Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) flight. Pretty good kit, and in the process they captured some spectacular footage of the balloon burst at around 30,000m.

The video's right here. Enjoy.

We're obliged to the chaps at Edge Research Lab for sending over a HackHD camera for use on our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission. We haven't got it into the air yet for a test, but the guys at Edge have used it for various flights and say it works perfectly. Let's face it, it must be better than our stroppy GoPro 3. More here.

Anyone out there involved in High Altitude Ballooning (HAB) operations might be interested in the space-grade Polyimide Thermofoil flexible heater rig we're using to keep our Vulture 2 spaceplane's rocket motor toasty at altitude.

The propellant doesn't much like the cold, so we need to keep it above -5 degrees C if possible - the minimum guaranteed firing temperature.

The last snap is the heater sealed onto our Ceasaroni 54mm 3G case with heatshrink, and the no-expense-spared $10 aquarium thermostat is to prevent the heater from melting down at altitude, where its mighty 2.24W output can't dissipate.

While the heater is only capable of raising the casing temperature 5 degs C above ambient on the ground, it's a completely different story in the air, or the lack of it.

A recent test flight confirmed the rig works as expected, and will keep the motor nice and warm. There are full details here.

Our Vulture 2 spaceplane is looking rather splendid, following a quick paintjob and vinyl wrap:

The wrap was designed by Ariadne, the 4-year-old daughter of a Register reader, and applied by Space Graphic Solutions  (see top photo). The underside paintjob, seen above with the Low Orbit Helium Asssisted Navigator (LOHAN) team is an in-house effort.

There are full details and photos of just how all this came together right here. 

We've wrapped the installation of the Pixhawk in our aircraft, and have now just got to get it talking to our onboard Raspberry Pi.

For your viewing pleasure, here's a schematic of the Pixhawk and R/C rig. There are full details on the install here.

Hot off the press, a quick exclusive snap of the complete Pixhawk rig installed in our Vulture 2 aircraft, and ready to roll.

Details of the installation to follow, but suffice it to say, it's a tight fit. The Pixhawk buzzer isn't indicated, but sits under the autopilot.

We haven't yet hooked up the Raspberry Pi to the Pixhawk, fearful of a Skynet-style self-awareness incident. That connection will enable us to programme the autopilot via the Pi.

The Pi is lacking its breakout board, which will have a GPS, and Radiometrix transmitter to beam live images from the nose-mounted Picam, as well as acting as a primary tracker. It'll also have a multi-axis accelerometer to record just how horribly everything went wrong just what a triumph the mission was.

The PAVA tracker is a miniature back-up radio transmitter with GPS. There's more on the LOHAN mission here.

Enjoy this quick heads-up about DIY Drones from the home of the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission.

Described as "The Leading Community for Personal UAVs", DIY Drones is where amateur experts and newbies alike share their projects, seek and dispense advice, and generally hang about to see what's what in the wonderful world of UAVs.

The site was started back in 2008 by Chris Anderson, head honcho down at 3D Robotics, which kindly provided our Vulture 2 spaceplane's Pixhawk autopilot.

We've had a few comments about last week's piece on our Vulture 2 spaceplane's Raspberry Picam, suggesting the thing might die of cold at altitude.

Well, it shouldn't, and has flown plenty of times without problems. There's more here, and the above snap shows the results from a  from a mission last September in Spain.

We've got the Raspberry Pi board for our Vulture 2 up and running, and the nose-mounted Picam is functioning well enough to grab a spaceplane selfie:

There's more on the Picam here. Now we can get back to finally wrapping the Pixhawk installation.

We've done some initial work getting the Pixhawk into our Vulture 2, complete with the hot-off-the-press external LED and digital airspeed sensor.

There are more details and pics right here. As of this morning, we can't persuade the airspeed sensor to, er, sense, so that'll keep us off the streets for a while.

Our Pixhawk autopilot has just arrived, so we raise a pint or two to 3DR.

The Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team this morning welcomed aboard a handsome young autopilot for our Vulture 2 spaceplane - the hot-off-the-press 3D Robotics Pixhawk.

3DR kindly offered to donate a couple of Pixhawks to the cause, after ArduPilot fixed-wing lead developer Andrew Tridgell suggested we'd benefit from the improved data-logging capabilities over our existing ArduPilot Mega (APM) 2.6.