Flight #2001-1 "Octagon"
Launch Date: May 28, 2001.
May 30, 2001
The Balloon Group has completed its first mission of the year 2001. We've gotten off to
a slow start this year due to many factors: weather, water, and the news of our leader
leaving town. We will continue, however, with flights this summer and into the foreseeable
future.
I was out of town for this first flight, so the writup was done by Blaise M:
After two previous attempts, canceled due to weather, we successfully
launched and recovered our "Octagon" balloon craft on the morning of May
28, 2001. Being our first launch of the true millennium, we decided to
keep our success rate high and launch the standard payload designed by
Charlie, John G., John N. and Blaise with a few basic additions.
The weather was perfect. Slight gusts at the beginning of filling
caused us to drape the large parachute over the balloon to assist
handling. Filling began at around 8:45AM. Our launch operations were
uneventful, except for some tangled cords. At around 10:00AM John G.,
Ryan and Ray Nemosek walked the balloon away from the crowd, let
out the train and gingerly launched the balloon. It went nearly straight
up. Trish L. and John G. watched the balloon from the launch site for
about one hour before returning home. Tracking went smoothly and Milly,
Dean and Charlie recovered the payload less than 20 minutes after it landed.
A description of the equipment onboard and the
successes of individual experiments and differences in the flown systems
will follow.
New Cut Down: John N. and Blaise improved the cut down design; screws
now mount the servo and the lever arm was slightly longer. Although it
worked, it was damaged from the landing and will need to be replaced (a
better cable strain relief scheme needs to be devised). Ryan Kramer's
chase team (Ryan, Blaise and Trish J.) observed the decent phase of the
mission and noticed that two objects (burst balloon and package)
appeared to be falling together and then separated. The balloon was not
at the recovery site.
Balloon Craft Bus: The simplified one-battery-pack power system was
kept while the BSII program was modified to allow time for GPS lock
(about ten minutes). After this time pictures would be taken and the
mission carried out as normal. A launch delay caused by tangled lines
resulted in an earlier than desired cut down. A possible solution might
be to add a device to activate the stamps' flight loop such as a pull
pin. The package was still emitting sound and packets after landing.
Engineering experiment: An engineering payload devised by Ryan and
Blaise was flown. It consisted of a TIQIT 486 matchbox PC and a New
Motorola M12 GPS; the TIQIT (running a DOS Qbasic program) logged all
NMEA strings sent from the GPS. This simple test was needed to
"space-rate" the TIQIT hardware for future missions. If the TIQIT
overheated and shut down, this would be noted in the log files. The only
corruption in stored GPS data occurred at startup and just after
cut-down, which are expected and due to the way the GPS functions at
high speeds and startup.
Geiger Counter Data Logger: This experiment failed. The Geiger counter
unit will be shipped back to company for a refurbishing estimate. It may
be worth while to purchase a new Geiger counter for back up purposes.
Cameras: The side-pointing camera took a total of 18 pictures.
Unfortunately, the downward-pointing camera accidentally turned off
shortly before launch. We were attempting to use color infrared film in
this camera. We will simply have to try this again.
More photos
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