Great story! There is a reason why the SPOT is one of the best "balloon assurance" systems out there. Doesn't do much during flight but great on the ground :-)
BTW, thanks so much for the BS2 code. Will try to make it work here. 73, Stefan VE4NSA On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 2:50 PM, Robert Bruninga <[email protected]> wrote: > Crowded Air space today over PA! > > Saturday morning, launched the Naval Academy Balloon (W3ADO-11) from > Harpers FY and noticed two other balloons launched about the same time > (W3EAX-9 and 11) about 40 miles north. All was going fine until... > > Our sincere apologies to MD, VA, PA, DE and NJ! At about 3000' our balloon > Arduino processor got stuck in a reset-loop and switched from 1 minute rate > to one packet as fast as it could re-boot. Less than every 2 seconds! > Fortunately they were direct only and at 100 millliwatts. > > Fortunately, we could still see some packets from the W3EAX balloons, and > APRS.FI seems to have copied them all. > > Then ours went nuts! and appears to have come down very fast, and we raced > to towards the impact point (20 miles away), but then 20m later, we got one > packet at 38,000 feet 20 miles farther east. Then another race though > Amish country and to our horror, the last position report was within 0.1 > mile of the river and still at 2000 feet and heading right out to the > middle! > > We were about to give up the search (no more packets heard and river > current pretty swift) when our back up system (SPOT system?) gave another > report about 60 feet from the water. Low an behold, there it was, 60 feet > from waters edge after having flown almost 100 miles. > > Everything intact includeing HDTV video camera! > > Apparently the students used a non-high-altitide GPS and it went squirrely > until it got back below 38,000 feet. But you should see the track > (W3ADO-11) > > Bob, Wb4APR > _______________________________________________ > Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. > Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! > Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb > _______________________________________________ Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
