Maintenance In Space High Altitude Patch Project
Delta Company, 3-10 GSAB Maintenance Platoon high altitude weather balloon project.
To provide esprit de corps and training in downed aircraft recovery, Maintenance Platoon of Delta Company, 3-10 GSAB will launch, track, and recover a high altitude weather balloon. The balloon will carry a payload of 65 custom company patches, 2 cameras, a ham radio APRS tracker, a satellite based tracker, and a 102 db audible siren to an altitude of 100,000 feet also known as Flight Level 1000.
Found the landing site. Picture from just after burst at 80,000 feet ish.
Crunching some numbers myself I came to the conclusion that it A: probably climbed for another minute between its last ping climbing and first ping descending. The two altitudes being 25,878 and 24,453 meters. The rate of decent doesn't check out between the two being just over 38 MPH. But then, due to the lack of atmosphere, compare this to my next conclusion, B: between the first descending and the second descending altitude (24,453 and 16,820 meters) with only 2 minutes between pings beacons, the payload was falling at 140 MPH! Using the same math and method, the payload hit the ground at 20 MPH
Some number crunching done by our guys at 10 CAB GEOINT Section. They took our raw data and plotted it on a map with color coded altitude. For whatever reason the plots showed up as ! marks on my computer. Still a neat map.
As much as I stressed it in the interviews, it never made it out in the news release so I'll state it here. This would not have been possible if it wasn't for the launch/recovery crew that we had, and equally important, the hams of upstate NY who came out of the woodwork to help track this thing. Thank you all.
The icing on the cake yesterday was spotting this snowy owl perched atop a house across from the North Country Store right before I got home from the recovery. Just thought I'd share.
From The Ground
Maintenance In Space High Altitude Patch Project's cover photo
Looking Out
The view from the GoPro lookign down
Been a long, exciting day. To give every detail would be daunting and long so here are the highlights. It was cold. -20F cold. Tape and glue apparently give up at that temperature so we were unable to secure the lid to the payload or balloon to the tether. Fortunately, a local ham, Larry (K2LAG), had zip ties which we used to secure the balloon and a bungie cord that we used on the payload cover. The patch, which was gorilla glued to the display boom, fell off and thus, in a hasty manner was skewered to the display boom. The balloon was already inflated at this point and the extreme cold was a ticking time bomb for frostbite. Time was not on our side. The launch went smoothly, the balloon going almost straight up for the first few hundred feet.
The flight went as planned to 85,000 feet until burst. Initially the payload fell rapidly but slowed when the atmosphere thickened. This happened rather violently as it ripped the display boom from the payload and the finder's information sheet from the payload cover. The payload landed in the corner of a farm field against a treeline. The APRS tracked it down to about 3000 feet and the payload was about 1000 feet from the last "ping". The SPOT gave us accuracy to 16 ft resolution on the ground and the payload was in the back of an SUV within 30 min of landing. Recovered before noon. "Now that's a good day SGT Savage". Pictures to follow.
The tracks. Thanks to Julie Covey KC2ZTG for the google earth APRS data. The yellow is the predicted and the red is the actual. Max altitude 85,000 ft. 15,000 short of the predicted altitude which is why we never got the full turn to the south.
Recovered
Heading down 12 to Utica to intercept.
Google Maps APRS
In the air. http://aprs.fi/ #!mt=roadmap&z=11&call=a%2FKD2IIC&timerange=3600&tail=3600