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November 19th 04, 01:21 PM

Leo wrote in message . ..
On 18 Nov 2004 04:42:46 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

In article , Leo
writes:

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 21:24:23 -0500, Mike Coslo
wrote:

Leo wrote:

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 19:50:46 -0500, Mike Coslo
wrote:

Len Over 21 wrote:

It's times like this that can bring people together. You and Brian
Kelly have something in common.

Realism?

Perhaps you could tell me, Leo? I've shown that it can and does happen
and that a lot of people are doing exactly what I speak of on a regular
basis. Believe or don't believe. It is your choice.

Mike, my point was that you have two folks with a fair amount of
knowledge and experience taking the time to give you feedback. They
aren't saying that you're nuts to be considering doing what you intend
to do, but they are offering you the benefit of their understanding of
engineering and physics as it pertains to your project.

If they are missing something (and me too, perhaps - this sure ain't
my area of expertise either!), then by all means show them where
they're wrong - but they are both pretty intelligent, educated and
knowledgeable guys, with years of real-world experience in their
fields - maybe worth at least a rational discussion? Or you could
throw a bunch of web references in their faces and get angry....

Your call.

Sigh...there will be NO "rational discussions" in THIS newsgrope
by PCTA with any NCTA. Hasn't been before, won't be ever until
the last code key is pried from cold, dead fingers. :-)

There have been - literally - millions of balloons lofted carrying
radio transmitters to high altitudes. Very, very few of those made
it past 50 kilofeet altitude...they weren't designed to do that and
part of that design-for-meteorology-by-metrology used ground-
level helium-filled closed balloons.

Basic information needed for any "manager" of this kind of thing
is the Standard Atmosphere data. [easy to get] Information on
the millions of radiosondes and (now) rawinsondes takes more
digging (it's of little interest to most other folks) but it's out there.
Next would be basic gas costs and what is required to get from
the supplier's bottle (costs a helluva lot more if the container is
not returned, empty or not) to the balloon itself. That's the
cross-over between work-that-must-be-known-and-done and task
logistics. The "manager" must eventually integrate all the on-board
equipment, cross-check that against lifting capability and make
sure that someone has checked operation VERY close to launch.
There has to be some kind of tracking of the balloon flight and
(unless one has a spare half-million-dollar optical tracker) it is
going out of sight in about ten minutes or maybe 15 even with 10
power binoculars. Supposedly the on-board GPS is doing that
tracking and reporting back accurately...but what if it suddenly
went non-operational? There needs be a procedural back-up.

Now, if the name of the game is Actual Amateur Experimentation,
then the "manager" ought to be able to sweet-talk his way into
getting his own experiment on board one of those already-proven
ham balloon flights. But, that may be defeating the whole object
of this blue-sky to near-blackness-of-space pipe dreaming...
the "manager" won't be manager any more and his name can't head
the list of experienced done-it-before types doing the actual flight.

Or, the project proposals for all this are pure pipe dreaming which
cannot Ever be negatively criticized without getting someone very
outraged for ANY sort of critique except high-fives. Dreaming
about something is fine. DOING it is quite another. Getting outraged
at not being psychologically sugar-boosted happens all the time in
here, realized by most but never by the proposer. :-)

Tsk.

Sad indeed, but true! Of course, it's far more important to make a
concerted effort to bash the messenger rather than analyse the essence
of the data presented in the message - that's how this thing seems to
work......!

If it didn't work that way there would be no RRAP.

73, Leo

w3rv