Amateur Radio balloon starts record breaking flight

I would like to know how you guys handle avoidance with any other air traffic? How many forms you had to file with federalis and with every other “authorities”?
Is this balloon going to cause an international incident when it accidentally enters sovereign territory airspace KAL007 style?
Is price of gasoline going up because of this experiment?

 

I have often wondered about that myself. I guess they need to have a minimum altitude thats way above normal air traffic fairly quickly but even then how do they get all the clearnces or is it one of those take a chance type deals.

 

There are lots of questions, however could a small alcohol lamp have provided enough heat to keep the box warm, could the balloon lift the added weight?

Did the GPS fail due to temp. or battery discharge rate?

Did the APRS shut down due to battery failure?

When is the next launch?

 

Hi Bill (K2WH),

I can agree with your position that the balloon is not part of Amateur Radio. I limit my agreement with you to the same extent that a tree holding up a dipole, a slingshot or bow used to launch an antenna into the tree, the tower used to support a Yagi, and the desk that holds up my station is not purely Amateur Radio...

I applaud the efforts of this team and I hope that their future endeavors are successful. The amateur radio community is a significant benefactor of these projects through increased publicity, fraternalism, and technical advancement.

- Glenn DJ0IQ and W9IQ

 

There are rules to be followed as far as the FAA is concerned, but for the most part keeping the package size / weight below a certain value, avoiding restricted airspaces and providing some fail-safe mechanisms avoids most of the hassles. See Here for details.

 

My Local radio club used a ballon to put up a 160 Meter long wire for some contesting. Pretty good idea if you ask me

 

Congratulations! You learned something today.

 

It's this whole "Why do something because it's a waste of equipment and time" attitude that keeps people AWAY from Amateur Radio. How do I know this? That's why it took me forever to finally get licensed.

I'd ask a local ham about doing something trivial... at the time I was messing with 11m and needed or wanted a better antenna. I asked a local ham about antennas. When I mentioned it was for CB band, I would've been better off saying unkind things about his mother at that point.

Back to the point: So these guys want to float a balloon full of radio gear across the world? Good for them!! Did it cost anyone who don't like the idea any time, money, or effort? NO!
Did it cost anyone ( besides them) any equipment? NO!!

Saying someone shouldn't do something because it might be a waste of equipment is in the wrong hobby... how many of us smoked a transistor - strictly for the express purpose of seeing what it's limit was? How many of us experimented with a circuit and had a resistor flame out?

I mean... seems like a waste of time, money, and equipment to me... (end sarcasm).

Myself: I find it quite interesting to see something beacon across APRS... be it a balloon, model airplane, etc..etc..

 

moved to proper post

 

Tha's cool, and not as unstable as when W8DC put up a random wire under an RC helicopter for FD. Beat up the LDG tuner something fierce against the ground but we made THREE contacts with it.

Heh!

Cortland
KA5S

 

Double heh! One of our club members had a big 'ol kite and got it flying, then tried to haul up a dipole and coax -- didn't work too well. I suggested using stainless fishing leader to fly the kite and setting it up as an end-fed. They looked at me like I was nuts.

 

Holy crap Chip! Sagan? You lucky SOB! I AM in awe! Now YOU could tell stories and never lose attention of the group. Holy crap Chip! Sagan! See the green forming around my ears? WOW! Amazing! Well freaking done!

 

These days the only Sagan people know about is Francoise...

The only story worth hearing right now is the possible cancer cluster centered around the Space Sciences Building and Sagan's lab from 30+ years ago. Too many colleagues dead prematurely. Including Sagan.

I am not an epidemiologist , so I have no compelling basis for asserting that. But the premature cancer deaths are real. Sagan's lab used dangerous organics to try 'origin of life' experiments. Plenty of benzene around.

That's all I will say about Sagan.

73,
Chip W1YW

 

We need more people to try long distance balloon flights, though for me I guess I'm too lazy to work on becoming a "balloon boy" (I'll stick with video Ron K6RPT flights).

However, one thing remains to be done... is an around-the-world flight by a unmanned amateur balloon. Would also be interesting to see what countries have and not have APRS gateways. On the transatlantic flight of CNSP-11 you can see Azores and Spain light up but nothing from north African countries.

What about someone in Europe launch a floater, those UK students had one go to Poland but overall distance was not much.

I asked Ron about a long distance floater carrying a repeater (he said it would be too heavy), imagine all the hams staying up all night to make contacts as it goes across the country (USA). However, some things that were impossible became possible with techie ingenuity.

 

Shame.
Perhaps it was Blue tantalums in the PSU drained the battery Hi!