[SixClub] [BLT] [HoustonHam] FW: LIFTOFF!!!

Mon Aug 22 11:59:59 EDT 2011

at the recovery site, the 5 packages seemed to be laid pretty gently 
across the two trees,  if they came down hard I would have  expected them
to be wedged down in the tree limbs a lot more..

They looked like they were just laid there gently, and were pretty easy to
pull down..  

I nearly fell on my butt pulling the highest packages 
down from the tree.. One guy was pulling with no luck, I took over but the
small ropes were cutting into my hands a bit.. I wrapped the rope around a 
few times and gave it a tug,   I fell back, Suzanne (kf5gwz) caught me
and she landed against michael (n5ptn).. the top two packages came down but
caught on a lower limb..  so they came down pretty gently...

I don't remember if it was the big package or the second package but one 
of them did hit the ground suddenly and crashed loudly as someone cut or 
loosened the rope.. A fall of 7 to 10 ft maybe..

I remember as we packed the payloads in the back of my truck, one of the
bigger payloads was open, maybe from the fall.. or maybe from the 
minor surgery at the landing point... I know someone disabled the beeper
and something else in the package before we loaded the payloads for 
transport to the BBQ place, that may be why one of the packages was open..

the last aprs data I have in my d710 memory for the package was 
29.12.89
096.45.85
which we confirmed to the actual trees via google maps after we
got home.. ha ha

which appears to be quite a ways from the last aprs.fi internet position.
other side of a creek..

As a chase team, we were pretty much always close enough to be getting
the aprs data direct from the balloon when it came down..  It did come down
a little faster than we expected it to.. We didn't hear anything from
ground control through the balloon repeater as to when the balloon burst.

All of the sudden we saw a 12000 alt and then a 9000 alt which is hard to
read on the d710s display when you are sliding along dirt roads at a
high rate of speed..  

we paralleled the balloons path on FM1300
we then went north through speaks tx to take co rd 14 to try to get
ahead of the balloon...  
Then we noticed the balloon coming down we were a couple miles north of it
on co rd 14.

there is a point where co rd 14 makes a jog south, that's where we expected
to take the dirt road south to the balloon... but the road had a locked gate
we were about a mile north of the balloon landing site there.

we went west looking for a way in..
we went south on co rd 1 expecting to come into the balloon from the west..
we got in finally through an open gate, we were exactly west of the balloon
but could only get to about a mile from it before we were stopped by a
fence.

We drove around a bit in that field trying to avoid the huge meadow muffins
without success..

We had to backtrack and go through an oilfield north of the package, we 
took tiny paths through the fields and woods trying not to spook the cattle
that blocked the paths and wanted to run along side us...

We weaved through and around to the north and came in to the balloon landing
site
by 4 wheeling across a small running stream, over a big dirt berm, and
through a big dry pond (or small lake?) then up on another path and boom
almost right to the balloon...

When we got next to the balloon we knew we were close, Suzanne (kf5gwz) 
saw the white parachute through the woods.. it was a couple hundred feet
off the road.

Dwayne (kb5yta) our navigator, jumped out of the truck heading for the
balloon
before I stopped the truck... ha ha   talk about exciting..!!

along the path we could see the other chase crew about a 1/4 mile ahead of
us,
they came in from the south but came to a locked gate which they had to 
stop and come the rest of the way on foot...

Our chase team this year was 
Michael Lay (N5PTN) general IT and MESH
Dwayne Jones (KB5YTA) navigator
Suzanne Runner (KF5GWZ) great eyes first to sight balloon
Eddie Runner (NU5K) driver 

Our 2006 4wd tahoe had
Kenwood D710 with Avmap that I watched as driver most of the time, it got
data directly from balloon
Also Icom 2820 we used for communications with other chase team and a little
crossband through
the balloon for fun when it was up.
Icom 7000 we listened in to the 6meter down..

Dwayne had a laptop he used just for his maps.
We had two more laptops with internet cards for aprs.fi tracking and an IPAD
as well
which we didn't hardly use...  We lost internet connectivity near the site
so good thing
we were close enough to get aprs direct from balloon...

We had a kenwood th72 aprs handheld, and two Yaesu aprs handhelds as well.

We also had two mesh routers in the truck one had a camera but I doubt if
anyone tried to watch the chase team... ha ha

Well what a blast we had, I cant wait till next year.

A few photos are of the recovery are on the BVARC facebook page

I have more photos and will try to find some space on the bvarc.org website
later today.

cant wait till next year, 
chasing the balloon is one of my favorite ham radio events ...

Eddie Runner (NU5K)

-----Original Message-----
From: blt-bounces at stevens.com [mailto:blt-bounces at stevens.com] On Behalf Of
Mark Bayern
Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2011 1:58 PM
To: Amateur (Ham) Radio in Houston. TX and surrounding areas; Chris Boone;
blt at stevens.com
Cc: SETXHAM at yahoogroups.com; houstonham at yahoogroups.com; World Wide Six
Meter Club; 6meter at yahoogroups.com; HoustonScan at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [BLT] [HoustonHam] FW: LIFTOFF!!!

>> .we
>> recovered the entire payloads.though they DID take a whack on the way
>> down.in the last 20000 ft it took about 2 mins to go through that.about
>> 120mph!! OUCH! I am putting together a story for next weeks Newsline with

When we reached the recovery site the packages were strung out across
two trees. I really doubt they took that much of a whack. By the time
we had them out of the trees the 1/4" wooden dowel that was a mount
for a 440MHz quarter wave was broken, but that has happened on the
last three recoveries.

The GPS data for the final stages of the descent shows a rate of
descent of about 22mph.

~~~~

This is from the last data we recorded from W5ACM-9 on the final descent:

$GPGGA,172952,2912.6498,N,09644.5749,W,1,12,0.7,3058.2,M,-22.2,M,,*46
$GPGGA,173202,2912.6563,N,09645.4241,W,1,12,0.7,1663.6,M,-22.2,M,,*49
$GPGGA,173352,2912.8399,N,09645.7203,W,1,12,0.7,609.9,M,-22.2,M,,*77

Using this data we can calculate the rate of descent for these four
minutes (all times are UTC from the package's -9 GPS):

Altitudes:

@17:29:52         3058.2meters	10033.4feet
@17:32:02	        1663.6meters	5458.0feet	
@17:33:52         609.9meters	2001.0feet

rate of descent is:

  between 17:29 and 17:32, time 2mins 4seconds, distance 4574.4feet,
rate 2213.4feet/min
  between 17:32 and 17:33, time 1min 50seconds, disatnce 3457.0feet,
rate 1885.6feet/min

  avg rate of descent for this 4 minute period was 2008.1feet/min or
22.8 miles/hour

Mark  AD5SS

On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 11:00 PM, Chris Boone <Cboone at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> Subject: Re: [50mhz] LIFTOFF!!!
>>
>> WENT GREAT!!! Drifted maybe 15 miles to the west and 90K height before
>> coming down..What a ride!! The 6m signal was copied over 500miles
>> away..the APRS was copied 1000miles to the west!!! The 28Mhz beacon was
>> copied in GA for a brief while..There was 75+ folks there..and it all
went
>> smooth..the video from the camera on the bottom payload will be on the
>> W5ACM.net site soon..I understand the video was AWESOME.we
>> recovered the entire payloads.though they DID take a whack on the way
>> down.in the last 20000 ft it took about 2 mins to go through that.about
>> 120mph!! OUCH! I am putting together a story for next weeks Newsline with
>> some the audio from the APRS systems (there were 3 on UHF alone) and
>> some of the crossband audio.I net controlled the 2m to 6m remote
>> base for a while.the audio was great on 6AM.it sounded like 125% Positive
mod like AM
>> broadcast stations use.which helped since the 6m signal was only 450mW!
>> Chris
>> WB5ITT
>>
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