The last month here at Pi Towers has been a busy one, as we’ve been preparing for our first ever Skycademy event. Since announcing it a couple of months ago we’ve had a great response from educators and youth leaders looking to run their own high-altitude project.

Having only ever done one launch myself, the team and I decided that a practice run was necessary. So back in July we invited Dave Akerman up to Cambridge and launched, chased and recovered our own payload. The whole experience was shared via Twitter.

From launch…

…throughout the flight…

The great british @Raspberry_Pi balloon chase is on! Watch it live here: http://t.co/igtdvXmSKS #skycademy pic.twitter.com/rS98pPh001

— Carrie Anne Philbin (@MissPhilbin) July 16, 2015

…to recovery.

Path showing where we carried the payload back to the car. #Skycademy #Picademy pic.twitter.com/l1DNcb4snk

— David Akerman M0RPI (@daveake) July 17, 2015

We even got to traipse through a ditch (an obligatory part of any HAB recovery surely?)

The day was great and now were really excited to be repeating the experience with our 24 Skycademy attendees, who will join us next week from the 24th – 26th. Some of them have been quite excited too…

Thank you, thank you, thank you…I'm going to #skycademy Just a little bit excited!

— Sue (@sooseeg) July 17, 2015

Only a few days until #skycademy! Off to buy myself a lego figure of me to send into space!! Must represent #scouting and #coderdojo

— SarahTempleton (@SarahFTempleton) August 19, 2015

The plan for the three days is loosely as follows:

• Day 1 – Orientation, training and preparation
• Day 2 – A series of flights launched by the teams (from approximately 10:30 onwards)
• Day 3 – Review, evaluation and planning future launches.

If you would like to follow what’s going on over the three days you can do so by keeping an eye on the #skycademy hashtag on Twitter, where you’ll find out how to track the payloads using links that we will share on the day.

Also keep an eye on the hourly predictions for landing sites. Let’s hope conditions improve a little, or we’ll all need boats!

That's not going to work ,,, please come back inland :-) #skycademy pic.twitter.com/k0W1dtNDj1

— David Akerman M0RPI (@daveake) August 18, 2015