Today we spent on all those little things which you want to do before a launch but you never have the time for. Today we spent most of the time testing and practicing with the telemetry. Although earlier in the blog we mentioned that our transmitter could send data we still had problems receiving it. That is why we decided to go for a backup plan. Instead of sending all the data we limited it to only the status and apogee in morse code. Eric and John John will listen and translate the morse code real-time. By doing so we will know if the flight is successful and what the highest point will be. We tested this system by driving with the capsule to radar hill and start sending the status of the rocket to the telemetry dome of the main building. This backup plan worked perfectly.  But there is even more good news. Just before dinner Eric found the error in the software where we were looking for the last few days. Now we will be able to receive the measurement data such as current pressure. The other secondary system, namely the camera, has been removed from the rocket because it did not work.

We almost finished the final tests with the final flight software. In a couple of minutes we will power down the electronics only to activate again on the launch pad on top of the sustainer motor. We are ready to launch the Stratos and tomorrow will be the best opportunity we had the launch the Stratos.

Lastly some panorama pictures taken by Emile to show the views we saw in the last two weeks.

The left building is the hotel and the right building is the main building. The two yellow shapes on top of it are antenna domes.

Esrange base by night with in the centre the main building and hotel. The bright lights are on the balloon pad and the lights on the right are on the launch area.

The ballon pad with the Mipas-b/Telis balloon on the lift and the Hercules balloon launcher on the right.