NSL-85

The entire flight train massed around 850g and was lifted by H₂ in a 600g cell.

The winds would briefly take the flight east towards Raleigh, and then circle back to the west, over Apex, and continue west until burst. A typical flight (ascent rate=5m/s) would likely land in Jordan Lake, so the balloon was under-filled to 1400g of neck lift (ascent rate=4m/s). This would hopefully take the flight further west away from the lake.

As the summer morning began to really heat-up, students held a countdown and released the payload.

Tim's tracker ran into reception issues, but the LightAPRS and T-Beam fed data to the Habhub.org. A LoRa receiver at Paul's home was able to pick up the T-Beam on the initial eastward leg.

As the flight passed back over Apex, the students and parents boarded their chase cars and headed west towards the predicted landing area. This was a collection of farm fields along US-64 near Siler City.

As the flight crossed over Jordan Lake, Paul's chase car receiver took over LoRa reception until the flight reached 22km. At that point his car's roof antenna fell into a strong antenna shadow and lost contact. Thankfully, the student's LightAPRS tracker continued to broadcast out to the group.

Burst occurred at 31,362m just west of Pittsboro.

One of the chase-mothers spotted the parachute first and many were able to watch its descent...

...directly into a stand of tall trees. The property was along a shooting range, so once permission was given, a team ventured out into the woods to find the payload. Sadly it was atop some large trees, so Tim was called in for the rescue.

As expected, Tim was able to get a line up and over the payload and pull it down later that afternoon.

Ascent and temperature data received from the trackers