Early this morning, Mel Vye, with the help of Jim Grover and Thom Price, launched another APRS tracked balloon from the Portage Lakes area. This one has reached about 44,300 ft and is currently traveling southeast in the jet stream. You can follow it on http://aprs.fi, searching for W8MV-11, of just click on the following link: https://aprs.fi/#!mt=roadmap&z=10&call=a%2FW8MV-11&timerange=21600&tail=21600 This may be a good Club project sometime in the future. Below are some pictures of the pre-launch work and launch. 73 - Frank, W8EZT Careful inflation to get about 8 grams of positive buoyancy. Sealing the balloon. Off to the boat for a lake launch. Jim is holding the test balloon Tom has the real balloon with the APRS unit. (Mel went up wind so the balloon had the entire lake to clear the tree line). Ready for launch Up it goes: And here's it's location when I wrote this e-mail (Monday about 2:42): Ballon now over Georgia approaching Azerbaijan |
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