Flight #2000-4 "Octagon"
Launch Date: July 15.
July 19, 2000
Flight photos have been developed. Their quality is not as good as
we hoped for, due to atmospheric haze and water damage from the gondolas'
swim in Devils Lake. Pictures will be added as soon as they're scanned.
Data from the student experiments has been downloaded. Unfortunately, the
Stamp chip on the temperature logger came loose and no data was recorded.
However, the Geiger counter worked perfectly:
Intensity versus altitude on July
15, 2000. Data from
KNSP
is shown for comparison (inset). Increase
above 80,000 feet possibly due to solar activity.
As you can see, the radiation on July 15 increased markedly above 80K feet.
This is possibly due to the proton storm caused by the massive X5-class
solar flare that occured on July 14. This flare caused problems for
satellites, radio communications, and even knocked out power in parts of
India. The timing of our flight was quite fortunate in terms of getting
measurements of upper-air radiation. For more info, see
www.spaceweather.com.
July 17, 2000
Success!
Flight #2000-4 (our 10th free-flier) was launched at 10:00 am CDT,
from the Hermanson farm near Harlow, ND. Filling of
our first 3000g balloon went without a hitch. We used approximately 180 cubic
feet of helium from two tanks, and used a surplus parachute draped over the
balloon to control it and protect it from damage while filling.
After launch, the balloon rocketed up at over 1000' per minute. We had some
more signal fading problems during the flight. If this was due to the solar
flare activity or merely a malfunction is unknown at this time, however the
signal was strong enough to allow many chase teams to receive usable
packets at least once per minute. The balloon executed a rather odd
circular flight pattern.
The balloon burst and the package descended approximately two hours after launch,
achieving a maximum altitude of 94K feet (we had hoped for over 100K with the
bigger balloon. Oh well, perhaps next flight). The gondola landed in Devils
Lake, and was retrieved with the help of some fishermen:
Payload floating in Devils Lake
A local family comes to the rescue!
KB0YRK with the recovered gondola
Data from temperature and radiation monitors will be downloaded and decoded, then
placed on the website in the near future. The film from the two 35mm cameras was
contaminated with lake water, so the local film lab sent them off to another location
for processing (rather than possibly damaging their machine). The two Pentax
PC-550's got completely soaked, and one was further damaged when the batteries
leaked, so they may be write-offs, we'll see. All other equipment on the gondola
looks in pretty good shape, however.
This is our second gondola to land in a lake (the first in a North Dakota lake),
so we may take steps in our next design to help prevent damage if it happens
again. This gondola was much better sealed than our previous ones, but the
ports cut for the camera lenses allowed the water in. We're investigating the
possible use of plexiglass windows to seal them.
Thanks again to everyone who helped
make this flight a success!
July 3, 2000
Due to the somewhat limited success of our
last flight, we've decided to repeat our
last mission and try to do it right this time. We plan to launch flight 2000-4
from the same location, but earlier in the day to allow better weather and more
daylight for chasing. Hopfully the chase cars will cooperate this time and not
all break down!
For this flight I'm rebuilding the 1200g balloon filling adapter. Instead of a
multi-turn 1/2" gate valve, this adapter will use a 1/2" lever-actuated ball valve.
Both have the same internal diameter, but the ball valve can be opened or shut by
twisting the lever 90 degrees. This will allow a fast shut-off of the gas if we have
another twisted nozzle incident. We'll also stick to genuine Kodak film for the
35mm cameras, due to the rather dissapointing response of the other film we used last
time.
Return to the UND HABP webpage.