Expo 2008/Sponsorship Letters

Update so far (as of early Juy 2008)

Stuff already received:

• 24*700ml bottles of sweet chili sauce (and other similar sauces) from Hoo Hing Oriental Foods.
• Tunnock's caramel wafers (many) and hats, baseball caps, t-shirts, stickers (may put a couple on my car :-)), tea towels.
• 2*BHR180 rotary hammer drills (see drill page) from Makita.
• Batteries from GP Batteries.

Stuff hopefully arriving in the next few days:

• The loan of one or two ruggedised tablet pcs from Rugged Systems

It would be very useful if they are sending a car charger for these for solar panel charging. If not we could buy one. -Aaron 08:24, 21 May 2008 (BST)

Discounts offered (are we interested? please comment):

• 25% off from Science in Sport who make Go-Bars.
• Mountain House meals £4 down to £2.20

Suggestions for companies to contact

• Xplore technologies (http://www.xploretech.com). One of these tablet PCs may well be able survive caving (they are built to military specs and work underwater). It would be a convenient way to set up dataloggers, download data, and potentially has surveying applications as well (there are cave sketching programs written for pdas and tablet pcs). Edvin, could we ask for one of these? -Aaron 00:47, 15 May 2008 (BST)
  • Letter sent - see above :-)

• Hilti: have we got our usual discount for spits and hiltis? -Aaron 06:48, 16 May 2008 (BST)
  • Have asked Stuart about this: I'm happy to wander into the Hilti shop in Cambridge at some point for anchors, setting tools and 8mm drill bits. Apparently spits and cones come in the Ingleton gear order.Edvin
  • You need 10mm drills for M8 HKDS anchors. The best drills are the 120mm long ones, although Hilti haven't had those on the shelf for the last few years. Maybe a phone call ahead would be useful. It's worth getting the good Hilti drills too, they stay sharper longer and cut faster. (The guy at hilti will advise), --Frank 13:13, 18 May 2008 (BST)

• Zecom: Wookey-acclaimed survey paper (see Expo 2008/Survey Equipment). They sponsored us in 1998, so try 'um again? We need as many "Waterbooks" as we can get.-Aaron 12:50, 18 May 2008 (BST)
  • Letter sent

• Infrared camera people: I would like to rent an infrared camera for the expedition, to actually photograph thermal gradients on the cave walls (potentially very publishable). I was filling out the form at http://www.thermascan.co.uk/assets/enquiries.html but then thought it might be better to let Edvin work his magic. What I had written is the below:

Dear Thermascan,

I represent the Cambridge Austrian Cave Science Expedition 2008. We are a group of mostly students conducting science, exploration, and mapping in uncharted caves. Starting in 2007, we have been monitoring cave climates to ascertain their response to surface change.

We would like a clear picture of the thermal gradients on cave walls near entrances, and for this require a thermal camera. It needs fairly high thermal resolution (below 0.5degC to be useful, but the higher the better- 0.05deg preferred).

The expedition has a small fieldwork grant from the Royal Geographical Society, but relies on the generosity of commercial sponsors.

I have used a Thermacam (PM695 I think) during my undergraduate degree and can arrange further training at the Geography Department.

Edvin, do you think I should submit this, or do we have a better chance if we call them? There are also quite a few other distributors out there. We certainly can't afford to buy a new one (they're GBP25K or so), but there is an off chance we can afford to rent one if they give us a big discount. -Aaron 08:11, 22 May 2008 (BST)