Cross-channel balloon flight update

The balloon flight on Saturday from Cambridgeshire carrying a 434.073 MHz beacon was not successful.

James M6JCX tells us what happened.

Apologies for the disappointment with the lack of a flight. Thank you all for getting involved.
Unfortunately the weather conditions, while good on arrival at the site, got progressively worse - at one point we had sleet, the winds picked up just as we started to fill the balloon and following our protocol for calculating free lift it appeared as if we had got the right amount, in hindsight this may have been due to the pull of the wind.

We then prepared for launch and as soon as we let go to our horror realised that the balloon didn't have enough lift to carry the payload, instead it dragged and bounced the payload, we chased after it and caught it after about 1 mile and a number of obstacles, to avoid it escaping and going further we quickly burst the balloon.

The payload has survived pretty well and it even had a GPS lock! a testament to the lassen IQ module obviously - apart from some scratches and quite a bit of mud, a fresh set of batteries, some more ballast and we can fly it again. You never stop learning in high altitude ballooning - this is my 12th payload and I've assisted in a lot of launches and yet things still go wrong.

However there have been some success to the day - I'm certainly happy the payload is still working, if it can survive a bit of bouncing then it should do well in the air, secondly the flight path wasn't ideal - we were going to fly over a number of tricky places, late changes to the forecast unfortunately.

But most importantly we managed to rally a large team of listeners both in the UK and in France (and also Germany and perhaps slightly unrealistically the USA as well) - sure there weren't any signals to decode but it shows that people are willing to take part and those who are new to this I hope you stick around and help out in the future - once the balloon is in the air it gets very exciting, there are going to be lots of flights this year both in the UK, in France and also potentially trans-atlantic which will definitely require some help!

So whats the plan? The aim is to launch as soon as possible, real life commitments slightly cloud the schedule and so does the weather of course. The other question is where will the payload go - remember this isn't a normal up/down flight - there is the possibility (hopefully) of floating which will extend the range a long way, with lots of listeners in France hopefully it'll go there!

Therefore potential times maybe the upcoming weekend or the weekend/week/weekend of 27/2/10 - I'll be fixing the payload and running lots of flight predicitions and simulations in the mean time.

If you want to get involved or just keep track of future launches either get in contact with me and I'll try and email you next time or sign up to the UKHAS mailing list http://groups.google.com/group/ukhas

Its open to anyone (even those not in the UK!). Also visit our IRC chat channel #highaltitude on irc.freenode.net , its a busy place with discussions both on and off topic and its the best place to keep up to date with the progress of various projects. A slightly newer place to keep in touch is via twitter, I'll definitely keep that updated with plans and progress: http://www.twitter.com/jamescoxon/

Thank you again for all the work and support - next time we'll actually get it into the air...

James M6JCX
http://www.pegasushabproject.org.uk

Cross Channel Balloon Flight
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/february2010/
cross_channel_balloon_flight.htm

There is a video of a presentation that Cambridge University Spaceflight gave to the AMSAT-UK Colloquium last year called "Teddy Bears in Space" you can watch it online at
http://www.batc.tv/channel.php?ch=1
From the Archive List select 2009 Amsat Teddy Bear

Or download a copy of the video at
http://www.batc.tv/vod/Teddys.flv