Paylaod/Balloon Details

I have been asked a lot of questions about the payload; what did we include, why did we include it, etc.  Here's a brief explanation of the equipment used for this flight (mostly found on Ebay and at Walmart).

The contents of the Led Zeppelin payload are picture here.  Starting at the top left and working around clockwise:  Two digital cameras a Canon a470 7.1 megapixel and a Canon a530 5.0 megapixel.   A Duracell battery pack charger (for the cell phone), the Motorola i290 Boost Mobile GPS phone, Garmin 305 Forerunner GPS, and a small CMOS video camera.  The Cameras were hacked with CHDK software to take interval shots every 10 or 15 seconds.  The cell phone recorded lat and long coordinates every few seconds and sent the information via 3G network to Instamapper.com so we could track the payload.  The video camera only had enough memory for 55 minutes of recording.Our basic Configuration looked like this.  At top was a 600 Gram Kaymont Weather Balloon rated for 101,800 feet.  Our parachute was purchased from Rocket Man Enterprises and was attached with zip-ties to the balloon.  The Led Zeppelin payload (beer cooler with 6 hand warmers to fight off the -58F chill) was attached with parachute rope to the parachute, go figure.  All of the equipment was secured inside the cooler via hot glue gun.  Two small carabiners were used to attache the payload to the parachute rope and the parachute to the balloon.Everything worked perfectly except the Canon a530, which tended to over-expose at high altitudes.  The Garmin GPS unit recorded flight details including altitude and speed.  The Cell phone had reception up to about 3500 feet and so it was useless except at take-off and landing (where we needed it most for recovery).