[WIham] Fwd: Invite To Participate in Search for Lost Balloon

[Mark Thompson]

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Joe <nss at mwt.net>
To: MadisonAmateurRadio at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 9:29 PM
Subject: [MadisonAmateurRadio] Invite To Participate in Search for Lost Balloon
 

  
Greetings everyone there.
Joe Here WB9SBD.

I havent done this here before, but thought what better time than this 
now.  I'm the guy that has been doing all those high altitude balloon 
flights.  Yeah now it's not so much a big deal anymore. People 
everywhere are doing it.  But I'm proud of our group as one of the three 
pioneers of it.  We have been doing this for 25 years now and have done 
51 flights so far.

I invite all of you to join the group here. It costs nothing other than 
excitement of experimenting with radios at the "Edge Of Space'  I'm 
always looking for new people to join the group. if you are even 
remotely interested drop me a note.

Now actually you can help out on our latest mission. We launched this 
past Sunday and have lost contact.  here is the details.

Lost Contact With Balloon, Looking For Listeners.

Last Sunday evening The High Altitude Balloon Group Near Space
Sciences launched EarthBreeze II, their 51st of these high altitude
balloon experiments. We have been doing these flights for almost 25
years now and are always trying something new.

All was going well for the first three hours of flight. Then as it
was nearing the coldest altitude, It began to operate oddly. Maybe
some background of the flight is in order here first. Please go to
the following web page to learn all about this flight. It is a very
unique flight.

http://www.qsl.net/nss/earthbreeze.html

Ok, symptoms of behaving oddly. As I said as the payload traveled
into the colder parts of it's journey, one of the last telemetries
had it being -47 deg C! The RTTY transmissions were designed to have
a 200 Hz shift. controlled by a crystal. As the flight continued on,
this shift was widening. towards the end it was almost double at
about 400 Hz shift. Also additional symptoms were the actual
frequencies were rising higher and higher in the waterfall audio
passband. Towards the end almost a full KC higher than intended.
This of course was also controlled by a crystal. So being nearly -50
deg C it was expected.

But what started to happen next was not expected. The transmitter
was set to transmit at 15 seconds after the minute. This was being
controlled by the clock in the GPS system. It was slowly
transmitting later and later and later, and nearly a full minute
late towards the end.

Then the last transmissions heard were very strange. Longitude
position of -184 degrees? It should have parked at this time at near
70 thousand feet. Then the last transmission came down, and it was a
very wide shift RTTY signal probably close to 500 Hz and did not
have enough time to adjust the software for a decode. in addition in
the short transmission, what 10 seconds? it swept in frequency a
good 400 Hz down in the waterfall.

That was the last anyone has heard from it.

Now we are asking for everyone to listen for it. Unless the
electronics were actually damaged by the cold, once they thaw out,
this should start to transmit again. even if the on-board batteries
die it should still transmit during the day because of the solar
panels. If it's still flying it may still be froze up since it's in
a location where last checked it is -55 deg C, but it has to come
down eventually, and then it will warm up, if it hasn't landed
already. Even on the ground this can be heard, pre launch it was
being heard by several stations via skip.

So we are looking for people to try to hear this run away payload.
unless it was damaged, it should eventually come back to life.

Any info or questions feel free to ask. don't forget if this
interests you at all let me know and I wll add you to the e mail
list of people to notify when we may do another flight..

Joe WB9SBD
Mission Director
Near Space Sciences
nss at mwt.net <mailto:nss at mwt.net> 

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