[LeArc] Spirit of Knoxville IV balloon mission complete

[Mark A Garrett]

The Spirit of Knoxville has declared that the SNOX IV amateur radio high-altitude balloon flight is now complete after shattering two world records and landing just shy of the European Continent in its attempt to be the first amateur payload to successfully cross the Atlantic Ocean. 

Launched at 10:40 PM Eastern Time on Monday, March 10 (0240Z on 3/11) from Downtown Island Home Airport in Knoxville, Tennessee, SNOX IV traveled over 3360 miles (5310 km) and logged 40+ hours of continuous flight before dropping into the Atlantic Ocean around 1700Z on Wednesday. 

The flight ended just after sunset local time as the payload approached Europe. It's last reported position placed it about 350 miles (563 km) southwest off the coast of Ireland. 

Although the payload landed just shy of the UK, the mission is far from being considered unsuccessful. Utilizing a 900 cubic foot "Zero-Pressure" balloon designed by Mark Caviezel, NG0X, and a liquid ballast system designed by Carl Lyster, WA4ADG, the balloon was able to take maximum advantage of the jet stream's 100+ mph (160 kph) winds during the first 24 hours aloft. These two designs combined to keep the payload aloft for such a long duration as the temperatures at times dipped to as low as -50F (-45C). 

The preliminary data is still being reviewed, but based on the information sent in from listeners and participants around the world, SNOX IV has set new records in both flight duration and distance traveled for Amateur Radio High-Altitude Ballooning, or ARHAB. 

Basedon the ARHAB records maintained by Ralph Wallio, W0RPK, SNOX IV shattered the 2-year old record of 1411.41 miles (2271.44km) set by Bill Brown, WB8ELK by more than double the distance. SNOX IV also bested the recent record of 32.26 hours set by Robert Rochte, KC8UCH on August 11, 2007 by about 8 hours. 

Listeners from both sides of the pond and from around the world participated by tuning in to the CW beacon and RTTY telemetry on 30 meters. By downloading software provided by the Spirit of Knoxville team, known as the Distributed Tracking and Relay Client, or DTRC, hams and shortwave listeners were able to send their reports back to the SNOX team via the internet, which in turn updated the Spirit of Knoxville web site with real-time tracking of the balloon based on accumulated reports. 

At several points in the first 24 hours, demand on the SNOX IV live status page was so high that the page had to be re-worked to a text-based version in order to support the demand. 

Even though the balloon set records and nearly made it across, the Spirit of Knoxville team is not going to stop trying to complete the mission they set out to accomplish along with other ARHAB groups in North America. Planning is already underway to get SNOX V off the ground to finish what SNOX IV started. 

Everyone is invited to attend a live press conference via the web and the SNOX team will field questions from participants. The chat conference is scheduled for 9AM Eastern Time (1300Z) on Saturday, March 22nd. Please visit http://www.spiritof knoxville. com for more information. 

Web Site: http://www.spiritof knoxville. com 
Report Submission: http://www.utarc. org 
Video of launch: http://www.viddler. com/spiritofknox /videos/5/ 
Video of DTRC and balloon's transmission (courtesy John, M0UKD): http://www.m0ukd. com/video/ SNOX_IV_M0UKD. wmv 
Ralph Wallio's ARHAB record page: http://showcase. netins.net/ web/wallio/ ARHABrecords. htm 
Spirit of Knoxville Media Package: http://www.spiritof knoxville. com/SpiritofKnox villeMediaPacket .pdf 
Email: contact at spiritofkno xville.com