Weather Balloon Project Launched!

Today, after about a year and a half of prep, a friend of mine and I finally launched our weather balloon project from Eau Claire. It is one of the most awesome experiences I have had, and I can't wait to do it again.

Here are some quick photos! We have about 50GB of pictures and video to sort through. More to come!

 

Launched: Eau Claire, WI
Landed: Near La Crosse, WI (closer to Mindoro area)
Max Altitude: 91,000+ feet
Balloon: Kaymont 800G
Cameras: (2) GoPro Hero3 Black
Tracking: Radio (HAM) as primary and Spot GPS for redundancy
Other Sensors: Altitude, exterior of payload temperature, interior of payload temperature, and a device that would beep at lower altitudes to assist with finding it

 

Completely awesome and great job!

 

Really amazing images. Congrats. Was FAA approval/ permission difficult?

 

It wasn't difficult at all, we basically just called the ATC that morning here in Eau Claire (we also checked with MSP the night before), and they pretty much just said "look both ways" first. We just had to be four miles away from the airport.

 

Thanks!

Here is what we have for a flight path.

 

way cool ry!

 

Thanks!

Since we have another 800G balloon, I believe we will be attempting to rework a couple of the components and improve our design. Hopefully we can launch again in a couple weeks.

Although similar altitude would be fantastic, we're just hoping for a clear day. Having a downward facing camera would have been much more useful with less cloud cover. It wasn't supposed to be so cloudy all morning yesterday, but it was. Overall we're still happy with what we have, and that we actually recovered our equipment!

 

I call BS, I was told the world was flat. But seriously this is pretty cool stuff.

 

Very neat. What was the flight time?

 

Very Cool! 73 de KC0LJS

 

Approximately 8:45am release, 10:40am "landing" (it got stuck in a tree).

 

APRS or what?

 

Yep!
http://aprs.fi/#!call=a/KC9VPH-11&others=1&timerange=3600&tail=3600

 

Did you drive the Mindoro Cut while you were down there?

 

Ha no, I didn't, although the Cut did cross my mind briefly.

 

That had to be pretty fun

 

We have a Flickr page with some of our favorite photos. Soon, we will be uploading the entire trip in sequence after we can sort them out (we'll post maybe 15% of the photos).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/101223264@N06/

Also, video is uploading.

 

Pop!

 

I'll make sure to add that callsign to my track list. Be sure to let me know when the next launch is.

 

Wow, awesome. Great photos!

 

Amazing!

 

Very cool! Is this for school/hobby/job?

 

Just for fun

 

Guys like you make me "think bigger".

 

We currently have the video uploaded to YouTube, but for each viewpoint, there are 5 parts. They've been added to a playlist, but I don't really like that idea. I'm attempting to piece them together to make two larger videos (one for each viewpoint).

 

saw this on facebook awesome job!

 

Link? since i'm lazy

 

I should hopefully have it all ready and posted by tomorrow.

 

Finally... here's the full video of our launch! I'm excited to share - be sure to watch it in 1080p!

 

Here's a write-up with more details illustrating the background information of our project!
http://nonstandarddeviations.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/behind-the-scenes-project-cloud-1/

 

Cool as all hell...even though it was making me dizzy and I didn't watch the whole thing. Thank you for not including a thrash metal or electronic dance music sound track.

 

Some interesting data: Temperature vs Altitude

 

F or C ?

 

lol, NVM too much beer, not enough Brain

 

Yeah definitely F. I was surprised to see temps around 70F so high up!