So on Saturday April 19th, 2011 I successfully launched my balloon. After a last minute check of the Balloon Predictor 2.0, I selected the launch site to be across the street from Bel Air Presbyterian church on Mulholland Drive just above the Skirball Center (if you're familiar with LA). The intended launch site was Chino, just East of the airport. Flat and mostly farm fields with some neighborhoods scattered in between.
Everything went great with setting up for launch. With my trusty tarp and helium tank, I was able to fill up the balloon in about 30 minutes while Jordan kept the balloon from blowing away or running away from me. The Motorolla phone was tracking for most of the drive up the 405 and was charging the whole time.
Cameras were running Intervalometer script and secured inside the enclosure. The cell phone was packed in a little pouch taped to the inside side wall. After a few more pictures (and unsuccessful attempts to update the blog with pictures) we launched! Went up pretty quickly and did not hit any planes. [Launch time was 11:50am]
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| Me with the BIG balloon |
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| Jordan actually did most of the holding |
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| All sealed up and ready to go |
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| Up, up and away....forever |
More photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/m_albert/sets/72157626549964746/
Balloon Launch 1 from
Michael Albert on
Vimeo.
After we no longer could make out the white balloon, we packed up and headed to the landing area. Took a while to get there, but the flight was supposed to last 2.5, so we still had some extra time. Despite carefully searching the skies with binoculars, we were not able to spot it coming down. Though spotting it was always an ideal (and very unlikely scenario), "Hey there it is!" I was still hoping. While we watched, we constantly checked the Instamapper location map on my phone. After 20 minutes had passed after the supposed landing time with no indication of reconnecting to the network, we starting driving around. Unfortunately there are a lot of orange things in that area due to the farms. It was almost like buck-fever, except with an orange parachute. Sadly, the only orange things we saw were sand bags, plastic fencing, and barrels. At about 4:00pm we gave up and headed back to my place. Six days later and I still haven't gotten a call with someone telling me they found my box of cameras. Could still happen, but not likely.
So what went wrong with the GPS tracking system? Unfortunately, there's really no way of knowing for sure. The only certain thing is that it did fail...big time. A few possibilities:
1) Frozen - perhaps the battery got cold enough during the flight that it shut off and didn't restart when it warmed up back on the ground.
2) Parachute/enclosure failure - there's a chance that the parachute got tangled enough during the flight that whole thing fell like a rock because the parachute never inflated. Upon impact, the phone might have been terminally damaged.
3) Bad landing site - An under-performing parachute or prediction error could mean that it landed much farther West than the target, up in Chino Hills where there isn't any cell coverage.
So what's next? Trying it all over again...but better. Already have another Powershot coming from eBay, and I'll be ordering the balloon soon since it took way too long last time. I'll be using a more robust GPS system- either a SPOT or APRS system (specifically this one from
Byonics). It probably would be good to make a custom enclosure with a heating system and a common battery pack.
More to come, but AHAP-2 is underway.
