BallastHalo 4: Todays Flight
James Coxon
Apologies for the disappoint with the lack a flight today! Thank you
all for getting involved. Unfortunately the weather conditions while
good on arrival at the site progressively got worse - at one point we
had sleet, the winds picked up just as we started to fill the balloon
and following our protocol for calculating free lift it appeared as if
we had got the right amount, in hindsight this may have been due to
the pull of the wind. We then prepared for launch and as soon as we
let go to our horror realised that the balloon didn't have enough lift
to carry the payload, instead it dragged and bounced the payload, we
chased after it and caught it after about 1mile and a number of
obstacles, to avoid it escaping and going further we quickly burst the
balloon. The payload has survived pretty well and it even had a GPS
lock! a testament to the lassen IQ module obviously - apart from some
scratches and quite a bit of mud, a fresh set of batteries, some more
ballast and we can fly it again. You never stop learning in high
altitude ballooning - this is my 12th payload and I've assisted in a
lot of launches and yet things still go wrong.
However there have been some success to the day - I'm certainly happy
the payload is still working, if it can survive a bit of bouncing then
it should do well in the air, secondly the flight path wasn't ideal -
we were going to fly over a number of tricky places, late changes to
the forecast unfortunately. But most importantly we managed to rally a
large team of listeners both in the UK and in France (and also Germany
and perhaps slightly unrealistically the USA as well) - sure there
weren't any signals to decode but it shows that people are willing to
take part and those who are new to this I hope you stick around and
help out in the future - once the balloon is in the air it gets very
exciting, there are going to be lots of flights this year both in the
UK, in France and also potentially trans-atlantic which will
definitely require some help!
So whats the plan? The aim is to launch as soon as possible, real life
commitments slightly cloud the schedule and so does the weather of
course. The other question is where will the payload go - remember
this isn't a normal up/down flight - there is the possibility
(hopefully) of floating which will extend the range a long way, with
lots of listeners in France hopefully it'll go there! Therefore
potential times maybe the upcoming weekend or the weekend/week/weekend
of 27/2/10 - i'll be fixing the payload and running lots of flight
predicitions and simulations in the mean time.
If you want to get involved or just keep track of future launches
either get in contact with me and I'll try and email you next time or
sign up to the UKHAS mailing list
(http://groups.google.com/group/ukhas) its open to anyone (even those
not in the UK!). Also visit our IRC chat channel #highaltitude on
irc.freenode.net , its a busy place with discussions both on and off
topic and its the best place to keep up to date with the progress of
various projects. A slightly newer place to keep in touch is via
twitter, I'll definitely keep that updated with plans and progress:
http://www.twitter.com/jamescoxon/
Thank you again for all the work and support - next time we'll
actually get it into the air...
James
M6JCX