"StratoFox 1" was a trip that was hastily arranged by participants in JP Aerospace's planned Away 17 research balloon flight at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. When several key organizers and participants of the event were called away for other pressing business, Away 17 was postponed.
For those of us from the Bay Area (mostly in or near San Jose), most of us had been looking forward to the trip and had our vacation time arranged from work already. So 9 out of the 12 of us decided to go anyway. The trip occurred from Friday, September 6 to Sunday, September 8, 2002.
It would at least be a chance to just look around. We don't get to do that when we're out there with a full mission's agenda to perform. But there were a couple alternative activities which we tried to arrange...
Though we got some equipment together, neither of these alternative activities were accomplished. The change in the nature of the trip happenned with too short of notice to make the arrangements.
But the intent to arrange a stratospheric foxhunt led to the name "StratoFox 1" for the event. We'll continue to use the name StratoFox for future exploration and experimentation trips.
Two months after this trip, we set up a web site for Project Stratofox. In August 2003, a follow-on Stratofox 2 trip was held.
| Saturday morning on the playa | 15 pictures |
| Saturday morning at Black Rock Hot Springs | 17 pictures |
| Saturday mid-day climb of Black Rock Point | 9 pictures |
| Saturday afternoon on the desert | 4 pictures |
| Sunday pack-up and departure | 4 pictures |
| Meredith's pictures from Stratofox 1 | |
Back up to "What a month! Sept 2002"
Back up to Ian's Black Rock Pictures
Back up to Project Stratofox
copyright (c) 2002 Ian Kluft