First of all

All my gratefulness in the first place to my three loves: my son Nicolas my daughter Aldana and my wife Karina. I Wish to thank their patience during the countless hours that I spent in front of the PC or in a library, devoted to this project.



Technical helpers:

Search Engines and sites linking us

Ahijuna! - Webespacios - Directorio de paginas web - YAAQUI.COM - Directorio global y regional con motor de búsqueda - Sitios Argentina - Lupa.net: El buscador de Internet - Directorio de Sitios WEB Gratis - Canal Red - Caronte - Portal Cielo Sur - Directorio de Ciencia y Tecnología - Buscador y directorio Grippo

To carry out a project like StratoCat is only possible with the right tools. They are:

Timeline JS: a very simple to use system to create highly professional timelines, developed by Zach Wise and available at: http://timeline.verite.co/ Araneae - v5.00 Beta: a very simple HTML text oriented editor, developed by Mark McIntyre and available at: http://www.ornj.net/software/araneae/

BK ReplaceEm - v2.0: a little piece of wonderfull software to make massive replacements. Plenty of usefull options it was developed by Bill Klein and is available at: http://www.orbit.org/replace/

CSVed: a little but very powerfull program that allows to edit CSV files. It was created by Sam Francke and is available at: http://home.hccnet.nl/s.j.francke/software/software.htm

Irfan View - v3.97: an excelent image manager with basic edition options. Developed by Irfan Skiljan and ready for download at: http://www.irfanview.com/

Nailer - v1.0: a very usefull and simple Thumbnails generator, created by Fahim Farook and available at: http://www.farook.org/Nailer.htm

PPWIZARD this is StratoCat's heart. An HTML pre-processor very powerfull that allows to develope "dynamical" sites without using PHP or ASP. Created and mantained by Dennis Bareis at http://dennisbareis.com/ppwizard.htm

I wish to thank also to Jim Unroe who helped me a lot in my beginnings with PPWIZARD and the webmasters of the dissapeared site W3aeiou whom with their ideas about usability influenced a lot the text oriented design of the site.



My special gratefulness by its vital contribution to the project, for:

Doris "Archangel" J. Morris, librarian of the Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA) in Wallops, USA by its incredible collaboration. If it had not been by its aid -that allowed me to obtain key data for my research- StratoCat would not exist.

Dwight Bawcom, former Operations Manager from NASA balloon program. Its wisdom and knowledge was a key factor to the deep change done on StratoCat in 2008.

Pablo Rusca whom granted access to the impressive library of the Instituto de Astronomia y Fisica del Espacio (IAFE) and allowing me to obtain a great amount of information as well previously unpublished pictures on regard the past balloon activities at IAFE.

Marcelo Salvia, from ZERO ORBITAL wich provide us with highly professional map's of balloon's flight paths reconstructed from original GPS records.

Leslie Forehand and Sonja Stevenson, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) library. They sent to me by mail copies of several NCAR's publications that allowed me to fill several information "gaps", besides to cause that the mailman of my district hates my. Also very specially to Judy Dayhoff who scanned and sent me by e-mail a lot of useful balloon related documents.

To Alejandro Agostinelli, the person behind Dios! and Factor 302.4 by his support to the idea behind this site.

To Diego Zúñiga captain of La Nave de los Locos (Fool's ship) and a great friend of mine.

To Vicente Juan Ballester-Olmos, from Fotocat Project by its disinterested cession of a chapter of a book he wrote "Expedientes Insólitos" and by its constant contribution to the project.

Who contributed with material, knowledge and links to StratoCat?

In this section are included, divided by countries and in alphabetical order, all the people and institutions that helped us in a way or other, including those websites that linked us. Believe it or not, remeber it or not, but, if your name appear in this list, you had contributed in a way or another to this project.

Germany Germany

Andorra Andorra

  • Jesus Serrano

Argentina Argentina

Australia Australia

Austria Austria

  • Nele Hottowy

Bolivia Bolivia

Brazil Brazil

Canada Canada

Chile Chile

  • Marcos González, Agrupación CANOPUS
  • Jaime Ferrer, Calama
  • Rodrigo Fuenzalida, AION
  • Fernando Noel
  • Gustavo Rodriguez, CEFAA

Ecuador Ecuador

Estados Unidos United States

Spain Spain

Finland Finland

France France

Netherlands Netherlands

United Kingdom United Kingdom

India India

Italy Italy

Japan Japan

Mexico Mexico

Norway Norway

Portugal Portugal

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico

Federacion Rusa Russian Federation

  • Dr. Yury P. Tsvetkov

Southafrica Southafrica

Sweden Sweden

Switzerland Switzerland

Uruguay Uruguay



Disclaimer

All the images and information contained in this site have the only objective of to contribute to the spreading, knowledge and diffusion of all the scientific, technological and social activity derived from the stratospheric balloon use.

We mention all the data sources of the information obtained from publications or other sites in Internet. However, if somebody saw some image or information of its property and don't want that that items appear on this site, write us and we will remove it. Some images have been modified for rezising purposes and/or to improve their clearness, brightness, etc. treating to maintain in all the cases those overprinted texts that indicate property or origin.

With single exception of those articles that have an identified author clearly, all the content of StratoCat can be mentioned and/or reproduced in as much the origin source is mentioned clearly and a back link offered.