[OZAPRS] Baloon ?

[Craig Turner]

Hi Tony,

Well yesterday started of as an overcast day here in VK1, so I went off 
shopping and doing various things, and when I emerged, it was beautiful 
and sunny, ideal launch weather, light breezes etc.

Unfortunately is was also 4 in the afternoon. Al had left a message for 
me that he wanted to do a trial inflation, and maybe a short trip. We 
planned on going out to a place near here called Captains Flat, but the 
sun was setting faster than we'd anticipated.

We ended up going to a park near Al's place and we set everything up, 
and hoped to get enough lift to fly it tethered up 50-100 feet. 
Unfortunately by the time we got everything laid out the sun was quickly 
loosing its heat. We got a full inflation, had the payload fully 
operational, and the ground station 80% operational. I'm using a TNC-X 
with a USB port, and it seems the TNC doesn't work so well when the 
laptop is running off battery, I use an inverter to power the laptop, 
and it works fine when the inverter is connected, but we were using the 
inverter to run the fan that inflated the balloon.

Everything else worked well. We also discovered that it takes about 40 
minutes for two people to deflate the balloon!

Unfortunately work, social and RD comp commitments will mean that its 
probably 3-4 weekends away before we will be able to do a full flight, 
But that gives me a few evenings to tinker with the payload, I will 
probably work on getting the TT3 to turn the radio on and off rather 
than have the radio on between beacons.

The 1900 feet altitude you saw is actually ground level around here! 
Canberra is quite high.

If anyone else is planning a balloon flight they should get in touch. We 
have had quite a few detailed discussions with CASA in the last few days 
and there is some info that probably doesn't need to go to this list, 
but would be of value. It will probably be compiled up as a FAQ sometime 
soon.

Regards
Craig
VK1HCT

Tony Hunt wrote:
> So what happened with the balloon ? I see the last posit from it at 1900
> feet south of Canbera . Was this tethered or something ? Maybee they are
> just testing still as the beacon sugests .
>
> Tony Hunt VK5AH
>
>
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