[McHUG] Dirty Birds and ZipIts

[Pat Kilroy]

Hi Rich and all,

I have too much data to crunch and report 
on, but I will offer some tidbits for now, 
based on "actual" upper winds data measured 
by the US National Weather Service. See 
below (lines up nicely under Courier New 
type, font size 10). I wonder how our own 
observations compared, for example, on 
where we were pointing our antennas? Did 
we rely too much on the pre-flight predictions 
and not scan other azimuths well enough? 

Although I do believe the balloon ended up 
going into Pennsylvania, missing Philly like 
my predictions showed early yesterday 
morning, and got above 35,000 feet before 
traveling beyond our radio horizon after 
burst. More data later. 

YES. Thank you, Pete Morton, for supporting 
us to the bitter (cold) end! 

I had to leave by 2 PM and could not work 
on my ZipIt with you and Steve. 

Congratulations to Steve Beckman on winning 
the BARC door prize FT-2900 -- right during 
his Sunday forum presentation! 

73 for now. 

Pat
N8PK

--------------------------------------
IAD observations March 28, 2010 at 8:00 AM EDT

HEIGHT PRES TEMP RH DIR SPEED
 (ft) (hPa)(degC) (%) (az) (mph)

Surface 1014 4 87 165 6
10,000 700 -1 1 250 21
20,000 470 -23 1 240 38
30,000 303 -49 1 245 66
40,000 186 -64 1 260 91

with heavy clouds (70-100%RH) up through 
about 6,000 feet and jet stream winds 
(60-100mph) between 27,000 and 45,000 
feet altitude. But also, ...

WAL observations March 28, 2010 at 8:00 PM EDT

HEIGHT PRES TEMP RH DIR SPEED
 (ft) (hPa)(degC) (%) (az) (mph)

Surface 1014 11 81 150 25
10,000 700 -32 6 210 56
20,000 470 -30 51 230 60
30,000 303 -46 62 245 91
40,000 186 -64 28 250 135

with heavy clouds up thru 8,000 feet 
and between 12,000 and 29,000 feet, and 
jet stream winds (60-135mph) between 
20,000 and 45,000 feet. 
--------------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:19:14 +0000 
From: "Rich Mitchell" 
Subject: [McHUG] Dirty Birds and Zipits 
To: McHUG Reflector
Guys, We did our balloon thing yesterday at the hamfest. I am amazed at how the little PICetSat Lite performs. And this one had the balloon nozzle sealed with duct tape. With the wind it was crazy trying to launch it. We listened until the QRN got too bad. I think we gave up somewhere in the 70s frame count. Up until the end the Dirty Bird kept rising, though possibly we detected a fall - hard to tell with the QRN. I think the listenable window was much shorter than in October because of the wind - I'm sure the lower winds really moved it along at a good rate. I did notice some change in the voltage readings which suggests that our approach to voltage monitoring is working. Pat, do you have some of the numbers and an educated guess at what altitude we reached? Pete, have you thawed out yet? [snip]