NSL-54

On Thursday, May 18th, Tim W. flew NSL-54 for The Franciscan School's 5th grade class on their Blue Ray Point field trip. They sent their principle, Mr Watson, into space for the 3rd time! Their payload consisted of:

• Mr Watson clay figure

• Water, alcohol, and balloon experiment

• AP510 APRS tracker

• TK102 backup tracker

• 808 camera (120 degree lens) without additional battery power -- Mistake

• RunCam camera (170 degree lens)

• Rocketman 3' parachute

Videos from the previous two flights

Because Blue Ray Point is only 9.8 miles from the RDU airport, on the 52 final, the school requested an OK from RDU. Before filling the balloon, Tim called the tower and they told him to launch "NOW!".

They scrambled to fill and launch as quickly as possible. Sadly, this didn't give them time to describe their process to the assembled students. Also in the scramble, the AP510 tracker was not activated, but thankfully, the payload also had a TK102 backup tracker.

Except the TK102 did not send back pings after launch...

So they traveled to the predicted landing zone and had people spread about 500 yards apart watching the sky. But they never saw anything.

About 20 minutes after it was due to land, the TK102 responded with 5 pings then no more. They found the payload in a farmer's field about 10 miles from the predicted landing zone.

Fun video clip at apogee: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9xPKOopDNHLVzR6U0sxMGEySmM/view

Tim W: "Moral here us if you call RDU, have everything already to go BEFORE your call. Second moral, do not launch in class-D airspace even if it is "OK" with the FAA. "