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We are currently in Coulee City, WA doing systems tests and waiting for a layer of fog at 2000 feet up to burn off. In order to fly, we need to have 5/10 or cloud cover among other faa defined details.
Update: Balloon Launch - Waiting for Fog to Burn Off
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Best of luck to you! I wish we could have used digital cameras for our similar project. You're going to get many more, better photos than we did!
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Can't wait. Next time (if you ever do this again) you need to find some way to send live video to the ground for as long as you can after launch as it lazily floats to the upper atmosphere. Anyway, good luck and cheers!
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What is the SSID/Call Sign you guys used?
KE4UIL
Kevin
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Found your info on balloon.pbwiki.com !
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Quickly, buy some marshmallow peeps or a bag of chips and put them on the balloon. The bag of chips will pop open when it reaches a certain altitude. By the way you won't make it in to space. The highest altitude a balloon has reached is 51.82 km or 32.2 mi. In order to be in space you have to reach 100km.
http://www.hobbyspace.com/NearSpace/index.html
So launch a rocket off your balloon.
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Quickly attach some potato chip or marshmallow peeps to the balloon. The chips will expand and pop when they reach a certain height. I really can't wait to see how this turns out. Good luck!
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Couple things...What is the SSID you are using? And put those potato chips on there! The bag will explode and chips will go flying everywhere!
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I'm confused... what were the altitude readings on the google earth thing all about?
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It does not look as if things went as planned. Did you get to launch today? UPDATE PLEASE!
BTW: Raining chips on the masses from on high would be very interesting, but could potentially be dangerous... You don't want anyone to get maimed by Doritos at terminal velocity!
You know I'm just kidding, but I say you use a small bag of popcorn instead... just to be safe. ;)
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there don't seem to be much in the way of updates, but based on the google map from the cell phone data, http://tracker.dxpedition.net/ahab_location.php, i'm guessing it launched
it looked a lot farther on the map, but it is only a 3 or 4 hour drive:
http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=%2B47%C2%B0+33%27+38.11%22,+-122%C2%B0+20%27+19.81%22+(47.560587,+-122.338837)&daddr=47.6853386667,+-119.507904&f=l&hl=en&sll=47.669087,-122.338257&sspn=1.734858,6.899414&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=8&ll=48.103763,-120.915527&spn=1.720361,5.097656&t=h&om=1&iwloc=end
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The chips, as far as injuring people, would be harmless.
I would be similar to dropping a piece of paper, it would not slice into or through anything, just slowly fall getting turned about by winds.
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Wish you the best of luck, but considering it is -80F up there, how do you expect the battery-operated stuff to work?
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For sending data via packet radio you might find this link usefull. http://www.ringolake.com/pic_proj/t_trak/data_trak.html
DataTrak lets you use the TinyTrak to send serial data like telemetry etc. over the ham APRS network.
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