On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 4:40 PM, Scott Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
> The payload was recovered in perfect condition. I did actually get > James' messages and what he sent agreed with my initial predictions, but > the balloon was under-inflated and I thought it was going to stay in the > fast eastbound winds longer and end up closer to Mojave. Okay, so we can't blame the i-gates for not sending my messages to Scott... we have to blame the thick headed driver for not listening! 8) > We could have stayed in the parking lot where we stopped in > Mettler and probably seen it come down two hours later. You could have seen it pass nearly directly overhead at 100,000 feet, and watched the burst happen if the sky was nice and clear. You could have also probably watched the payload crash to the ground after a 5 minute drive! > The fast decent rate was because there wasn't any parachute. The > original plan was to fly only the tracker, but at the last minute I > added the Flip Ultra camera (still downloading right now) which > increased the weight significantly. Well, that would explain the significantly faster descent than I had used as a best guess in my prediction. You're making me look bad! > It was definitely a longer and higher flight than I was expecting from > an 800 gram balloon. That was a decent altitude! What was your payload mass? I guessed at about 30,000 metres for burst. > We got pretty lucky with the landing site - it came down in a freshly-plowed > field a couple hundred yards from a dirt road. They still don't have anything planted there yet? The GoogleEarth image is from Oct 21, 2009 showing it as a ploughed field. > I'm exhausted from the chase, though. I think I'll take a nap while I > wait for the video to download. It's pretty hard on an old guy, getting up early in the morning, and then a day full of excitement... I look forward to seeing some of the images captured. James VE6SRV PS. Did you at least give WB9KMO a pointer about running a proper outgoing path?
