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Hey,

I have a lot of experience with finding balloons and predicting where they will come down because I normally launch a balloon every other week back in Boulder. I trust the prediction spreadsheet I use very much. You can see from the graphs I attached that the areas you have been searching might not be far enough to the north. I think, with a lot of luck, these new predictions should help locate the cameras!

I use very similar parachutes on my instruments. I picked a flight that had similar descent rates and used those descent rates in the model. I also used the wind data from your flight which I downloaded from your website. Great job posting all of that info with the pictures of where you searched. I think it will pay off.

Here is where I would start:
Lat: 47.8762
Long: -119.78975

I did some guess work to come up with this point so I wouldn't give up if it is not right there. After looking at the maps, I wonder if it floated long enough to land in the river to the north of where I predicted. That would be terrible. I really don't think that happened, but you never know.

For future flights I would highly recommend using a valve on the balloon so that the package comes down nice and slow and it makes the recovery mission much easier because you can see the balloon float down in most cases. I will attach some pictures of the valve we use. It is just a piece of 3" thin walled PVC pipe with a plumbers cap on top. The gray valve is just a conduit connector that electricians use. All those parts are under $2 each I think. The string in the X over the brown "nicrom" wire cutter is just cheap string we get from the excess pay-out reels we buy in bulk. Any old string would do I am sure. The nicrom wire is very short and stands off the piece of phenolic on two small posts. I have part numbers for all these things if you are interested in building something like this in the future. We basically short a 3.0V lithium C cell battery across the 0.25Ohms on the nicrom at a certain pressure (we shot for 12mb or 30km on our flights). I will attach a picture of the micro controlled pressure activated cutter board we built as well. You can buy all the parts from digikey I think for cheap and the pres sensor from a guy we get them from. They work awesome. A micro with a timer would work also, but this is a little better because you can't always calculate the rise rate accurately enough to do it all by time.


Best of luck,

Emrys

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When I read that it might be in crops that you cannot get to, my first thought was to make a tethered camera balloon and float it over!

Sorry to hear that you couldn't find it. Next time, contact your local Ham Radio club. Most clubs have people interested in "Fox Hunting" and they'll help build a transmitter to go into the payload. They also have the direction finding equipment to pinpoint its location.

You may find volunteers for a grid by grid search, if I was closer I would help. I hope you guys find it, if not I hope try again. Good luck.

Next Time anyone goes out -- you may want to place Lost& Found Signs with additional Contact info. on Sticks/ wire.. might help?

When a friend of mine took me out to launch high power rockets, I was thinking that a camera at the top of an extension pole would help for searching tall grass/plants. Something like a simple security camera and a pocket TV.

HP Rocketeers also use recovery beepers - loud piezo beepers set up so that they don't start beeping until the 'chute deploys.

Could work one of these into the next balloon, and/or a radio beacon that doesn't activate until descent begins, to save batteries.

Sorry that you guys lost the AHAB. Hope someone found it and returned soon.
Maybe you need another balloon or a RC plane/helicopter flying high and look down to search for it.

Sorry that you guys lost the AHAB. Hope someone finds it and returns it soon.

Maybe you need another balloon or a RC plane/helicopter flying high and look down at the location where you think it may be there to search for it. (If you ever go search again)

Hand out fliers to the local farmers and farmworkers and post like a $50-$100 reward on it, someone may have happened onto it and threw it in a shed not knowing what it is.

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