Flight #2000-3 "Phoenix-III"
Launch Date: June 29.
July 6, 2000
Radiation vs. Mission Time.
Radiation Intensity vs. Altitude.
GPS Altitude vs. Mission Time. (Incomplete due to crash of APRS receiving computer)
July 3, 2000
The signal from flight 2000-3 was more healthy than I thought. KC0CRU,
our chase leader, sent us the following report:
ND and MN Ham Report on latest balloon signal.
signal heard by:
WA0HUD in Willow City
WC0M in Rock Lake
KF0DI in Minot
WA0VKI in Benford (Note landing Site)
N0MVN in Lake Park MN
and a ham heard it in Bismarck
We also have the output of the student payloads:
Temperature (two DS1620 temperature transducers, fed into a
Parallax Basic Stamp II,
running as a data logger. Source code.)
Radiation (Aware Electronics
RM-60 Geiger counter interfaced to a
Parallax Basic Stamp II
through a Maxim RS232 to TTL level converter. Source code.)
June 30, 2000
Success!
Well, perhaps qualified success would be a more appropriate term. We did
launch, fly, and recover the Phoenix payload on its third free flight. There
were a few snags, however. Better start at the begining...
Our launch site was the Hermanson farm, near Harlow, North Dakota (west of
Devil's Lake). We arrived in two vehicles: John G's Ford Taurus GL and my
Taurus SHO. Upon arrival, John's transmission failed: the car wouldn't
move forward or reverse. Working against the clock (NOTAMs are time-
specific), we decided to do the launch and work on the car later. As we
prepped the payload and filled the balloon, quite a few hams and other folks
(including a reporter from the local paper) came out from Harlow to watch.
Nothing like an audience to put the pressure on! :) This time we attempted
to use a hold-down device over the balloon during filling to keep it from
blowing around. Our device consisted of a bedsheet with four water jugs
tied to the corners. This worked ok until the balloon got to about half
inflation, at which point it would no longer fit under the sheet and
decided to squirm out from under it. This wasn't a problem until we had
about 250 psi of helium remaining in the tank (it started with 2300 psi).
At this point, a breeze put a twist in the balloon nozzle, pinching it
off. As the gas continued to flow, the lower nozzle began to swell at
an alarming rate. John frantically tried to shut the adapter valve off
while I screwed the tank valve closed as fast as I could. Neither of us
was fast enough, and we were rewarded with a loud POP. I looked up,
expecting to see John draped in the remains of the balloon, but instead
saw that while the nozzle had blown out, the rest of the balloon was
intact and still had gas in it. John, thinking quickly, had pinched off
the balloon above the hole, and saved the gas. I quickly sealed off the
balloon with a cable tie, and we decided to go for launch.
We tied the lanyard to the balloon, folded the nozzle over, put on another
tie, snipped the dangling ends, taped the nozzle for good measure, and
began easing the balloon up. I activated the last switch, taped the wires,
and we let the beastie go. My cell phone was useless (out of range), so
we borrowed a landline to activate the NOTAM, and all seemed to be going
well.
A quick look over John's car didn't reveal any obvious problems (like low
tranny fluid), so we pushed it to an unused corner of the farmyard and
transfered all the ham gear to mine. During the process, we noticed the
payload wan't climbing as quickly as it should have been. The balloon
had been underfilled, and we only ended up with a small amount of positive
lift.
The chase was interesting. We couldn't get in touch with the other chasers
due to a power amp problem with one radio, and the low altitude of the
balloon and a poorly placed controller box within the payload
(an aluminum plate next to a transmitter antenna, my fault) meant ours
was the only chase team receiving a usable signal. We actually got
ahead of the balloon (a first), and grabbed some food in Devil's Lake
while we waited for it to drift by. At that point our computer crashed
(power plug on an inverter came loose), leading to some tense moments.
After that was fixed, the battery in our TNC went out, but luckily we
had a spare. We finally got the APRS system working again and dashed
off after the package. We got underneath it twice, but couldn't make
visual contact, despite its low altitude. At about three hours into
the mission, the gondola made a very nice, gentle descent. It took us
about 45 minutes of driving around gravel roads until we reaquired the
signal, got a GPS reading, and drove to the landing site. The
gondola landed right next to a bunch of evergreen trees (luckily
not in them), about 20 feet from a road. This was near Binford,
North Dakota.
We grabbed the payload, took
a few pictures, then drove back to Grand Forks.
There we hooked up with another chase team consisting of Blaise and Trish.
They had been waiting in Petersburg, since the balloon should have gone
in that direction. They had received a very weak signal (not enough to
decode with their TNC), had driven around, trying to get a better one,
when Blaise's Taurus blew a radiator hose. This was not a good day for
Ford Tauruses (luckily my Taurus SHO worked the whole time). They met
up with another chaser, limped Blaise's car to a service station, and
dumped in enough water to nurse the car back to Grand Forks.
It was rather late when we all got back to town, so after a few swapped
stories and pulling the film and student experiments out of the payload,
we all called it a day. Not a red letter day in our ballooning project,
but things could have gone much worse.
June 29, 2000
Flight 2000-3 is set for launch the afternoon (approx 4 pm) on June 29, 2000,
from a location near Maddock, North Dakota. We'll be using our venerable
Phoenix payload, this time adding a Geiger counter and data logger. Due to
space problems, we will not be flying the 440 repeater on this flight.
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