The Midland High School and Northeast Middle School Electronics and Wireless Communications Clubs will be launching a high altitude balloon carrying an experimental electronic payload and Amateur Radio tracking equipment. The payloads should reach near 100,000 feet before the balloon bursts and the payload parachutes back to earth. The team will be tracking and chasing the balloon in order to recover the payload. They would be delighted to have you join them in the launch of the balloon and the recovery.
The launch date is Saturday May 2. If the weather is bad on that day, unfortunately the launch will have to be cancelled.
The students will be tracking the flight of the balloon, and be receiving flight telemetry using Amateur Radio wireless technology and will be following the balloon so that the payload can be recovered. You can also follow the flight of the balloon on a website; www.aprs.fi . If you enter W8MHS-11 or N8NNA-11 (the two redundant trackers in the payload) in the upper right hand corner of the aprs.fiwindow, and click on search, the map will show you a balloon icon with the W8MHS-11 (or N8NNA-11) call sign. This will be the last reported position of the balloon. The data will not show up until the tracker has been started up on the day of the launch. You will also be able to track the location of Dr. Klipa’s vehicle by entering the call sign, N8ERF-9 in the www.aprs.fi search window.
Once the balloon is launched we have no control over where it goes, as the team is at the mercy of the winds at various altitudes. The students have learned how to predict where the balloon is going to go, however, so they will have some idea where it will land. The main concern is that they want to be able to recover the payload and retrieve the experimental data that will be collected. Since they want to avoid landing in the Great Lakes or Canada, swamps, forests, etc, the team may need to launch at a location away from Midland. The last several launches were made from Midland, Beaverton, Big Rapids, Gladwin, Edenville and Mt. Pleasant. The launch from Midland ended up in Ontario!
Predictions can only be made a few days in advance since the wind predictions from NOAA are only accurate that far out. The team won’t be able to make a decision as to the launch and landing zones until a few days before the launch and will update the prediction on the morning of the launch. There is a very high likelihood that they will have to travel to the launch site in order to have a suitable landing area. To accommodate that, everyone should check in at the Staging Area at the entrance to Northeast Middle School before 7:30am on the day of the launch. You will be given instructions and the plan for the day starting at 7:45. The team will depart from Northeast Middle School at 8:00am, splitting into two groups: a Launch Team and a Recovery Team.
The Launch Team will be going to the launch site and the Recovery Team will be heading to the area surrounding the predicted landing zone in order to track the balloon and prepare for recovery. After the launch, the launch teams will head toward the recovery zone. The challenge will be that while the flight will take about two hours, the launch team may be a three hour drive away from the landing zone and people should be in the area to track the payload as it comes in for a landing. You will have to make a choice whether to participate in the launch and then head to the landing zone or to be part of the Recovery Team from the beginning. In the unlikely event that there are calm winds at all altitudes, the launch and landing zones may only be 30 minutes apart and the decision would be easier.