RadioBanter - View Single Post

November 20th 04, 03:54 AM

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
...

Mike, my point was that you have two folks with a fair amount of
knowledge and experience taking the time to give you feedback.

Who are they, Leo?

Who on this newsgroup has even attempted to launch a radio-carrying ballon
to 100,000 feet? Or even to half that?

Me.

bwaahaahaa

Not to FL 100 but close enough RRAP purposes.

How close, just for grins?

The Maryland state
enviornmental agency and NOAA operate remote contolled air sampling
and WX monitoring stations at the air field where I based my
ultralight in Harford County. The state recruited volunteers who were
regulars at the field to fill and launch balloons they supplied as
kits for assembly and launching on specific dates at specific times
over a period of a about a month.

1990 or so. I volunteered and was involved in three launches. A state
guy conducted a two-hour meeting at the field during which us
volunteers were taught hands-on how to do the assemble, test and
launch work.

The drill was to unpack the kit, lay everything out on the overrun
grass off the south end of the turf runway, hook it all together,
inflate the balloon and tie it down. At this point the electronics and
batteries were checked out by sending a system test routine to the
ground station rcvr. There were zero failures at ground level on 20 or
so missions from that airport. There was one inflight failure at some
very high altitude according to feedback from the state.

Usually a 2 or 3 man crew per launch was involved, two out on the
grass and one in the FBO office who dialed FAA Leesburg, announced the
launch then got on the local UNICOM freq and broadcast a "balloon in
the air" alert and our job was over that day.

The payload instruments inhaled and analyzed air samples at various
pre-programmed altitudes. The payload radio shipped the analyzer
output data back to the ground station which was networked back to the
agency group doing the studies via a dedicated phone line. They also
had other networked rcvrs scattered around the state listening to the
payload radio for backup purposes.

Good show!

73 de Jim, N2EY