Trial Batch

The manufacture of the first batch of products is now well under way. Here are some photos from the machine shop.

Wing shell and base parts part-machined

The upper part of the shell part-machined

We should be getting the parts back over the next couple of weeks and then we can start to start assembling them ready for field trials.

Winging it - Exhibiting the Wing for the very first time

I'm very happy to share some great news; the Wing's been on its first ever Public Outing, and it went really well.

Those worries I had of Murphy's law doing it's worst were unfounded and the second attempt at ordering the right thickness of electronic circuit board was successful. It was a good job really as we had booked to exhibit at a UK Interactive Entertainment (Ukie) event that was held in Liverpool last month and only got it all put together late on the Sunday night before the event.

Exhibitions can be a good way to introduce a product to people and are often used as a launch-platform for a new product. We are only now starting to prepare the product for field trials so we couldn't really call it a product launch. 

So, we rocked-up complete with a banner beautifully printed by Birmingham based Alhambra Print, a set of flyers, and a laptop running Arma 2.

We didn't know quite what to expect, but the reception we got was far beyond whatever we did expect. We got brilliant feedback from people from many different fields, not just gaming (as you might expect from a gaming expo), but from music production, finance to, err, virtual environment designers for penguin sanctuaries... the one thing in common being that people liked the Wing. Which was nice.

Here are some photos from the event.

Sam at the exhibition

Sam on the way home narrowly escaping
an attack from one of the Liver Birds

We're now trying to decide whether or not to go to another exhibition in October to introduce the product to some of the other industries. The main contender is the Engineering Design Show. There is a lot of scope for potential customers but it's a big unknown whether we'd get real value. And at the wrong side of £3k, we would need a lot of value.