HAB Launch

  I always enjoy attending a High Altitude Balloon launch at Valley View Junior High here in Farmersville, Ohio. Read about the last one and get additional background here.

 

 The instrument package was prepared under a canopy. While the weather wasn't rainy, it was chilly (57° at the 10:30 AM  launch) and cloudy. A gentle wind was coming from the ENE.

 Several classes from the junior high attended the launch.

 Filled with helium, the weather balloon was ready to go and was held down by several students.

 Here's a view of the actual launch.

The flight:

 Oddly, the balloon began its ascent and traveled to the SW but higher winds began taking it to the NW.

 At 11:06 AM it had curved back north of Farmersville and was heading slowly towards Dayton.

 About an hour into the flight 

About three hours into the flight

It looks as though data was no linger being  received so I'm not sure if this is an actual position or an estimated one. The balloon  looked to be near Fairborn and lined up with Springfield. [05/23/22]

More as it becomes available ...

1. Jill Weaver reported that this balloon achieved their highest altitude (90,000 feet or over 17 miles).

    [But see #3 below]

2. Said Weaver, "We recovered the parachute and Stratotrack on one farm field in Milford Center, Ohio and the payload that had separated from the parachute in an adjacent farm field. We actually heard the beeper and used a drone to find it! Flight time 2hrs and 20 mins."

Landing location - Credit: Google Maps

3. 05/25/22. Weaver posted:

High Altitude Balloon Launch Data from flight computer and camera comments.

Top camera: worked but the payload was at a slight angle, so it didn't catch the balloon pop fully or the parachute well. It did catch the landing

Side camera: the SPOT tracker was right in front of it, so it did not catch anything except the last bit when the parachute detached and the SPOT started flying everywhere in free fall. So, it also caught the landing

360 camera: caught video past balloon pop, but not the landing (battery died). Most of it is kind of boring, because there was so much cloud cover that you couldn't see anything. Annoyingly, it seems like the parachute was in a blind spot most of the time

Still need to hook up the Geiger counter to gather data

Top speed: 203 km/hr at 37.4k feet going up (126 mph)

Coldest outside temp: -29.2 °F

Coldest payload temp: 5 °F

Highest recorded altitude (but stuck on this for a while, so it got higher): 82,097

Lowest pressure recorded: 3064 pascals (3% pressure on ground)

4. 05/27/22: Weaver supplied me with the graphs of temperature, radiation, velocity and pressure. Click on any graph for a higher resolution version.

Temperature

Radiation

Velocity

Pressure