News release: 5 March

We have established a practice 'Base Camp' at Guidonia air base some 30Km NE Rome courtesy of the Italian Air Force, complete with most of the team, film crew and Eagles.

It is of course not an exact simulation as we will not have any vehicles in Nepal and certainly no illumination (they have thoughtfully turned around some of the street lights so they light our camp at night).

Yesterday we assembled all our kit and today we flew two practice tows to 1500 ft to test out our systems, in particular the Bailey Aviation 'super-trolley' Angelo will have to use in Nepal because the density-altitude at 12,500 ft means he simply won't be able to run fast enough to foot launch at our Syangboche advance base camp.

The trolley has several unique features: It has a highly adjustable steering arrangement which works by two arms in contact with Angelo's harness. He can steer the trolley by normal 'weightshift control' input. The tracking and castor of the front wheels is set so the trolley is very stable at high speed and will continue to track in a straight line after launch. It also has brakes so Angelo can stop quickly in the event of a line break during launch and automatically after launch (to prevent it disappearing over a cliff at the end of the strip).

The trolley needed a couple of small modifications after the first test when the steering links were proven not strong enough, but thereafter it performed as it was designed to. We are very pleased with the design and it is now passed fit for use on 'the real thing'.

We have clearance to 10,000 M for a full-height test either tomorrow or Sunday, depending on the weather. The Italian Air-Force are providing two detailed meteorological briefings daily, at the moment the weather is not looking good, but there may be a window of opportunity tomorrow (Saturday) morning.

We have worked late into the night to prepare everything for tomorrow, in particular we have successfully re-filled our lightweight oxygen bottles to 220 Bar using the booster pump provided by HP-Air / Paramina. This rare hand-operated pump is a real boon to the expedition as it means we can be sure our lightweight filament-wound oxygen bottles provided by Andy Elson and IPT are full to capacity with dry oxygen and we will not be at the mercy of low-pressure source bottles in Nepal.