New slide show of shots taken by Percy and Julie at both launches:
Here are some more shots from the ground documenting some of the preparations immediately prior to both launches.
We took a couple of thousand photographs from the ground, up to nearly94,000 feet and back down again. The cameras continued to operate on the ground until the memory chips filled up. The 7.1 MegaPixel Canon a470 was the work-horse and had a 4GB card on board. The Canon a530 had a tendency to take over-exposed pictures. We think it was either due to the settings, or the cold.
Here is a graph of the the flight altitude vs. time. A couple of points here: 1) We achieved an altitude of 93,910 feet on the first flight (92,690 feet on the second). Using a graph like this and some precise measurements with our cameras interval timing mechanism, we were able to confirm the altitude measurements calculated from the raw GPS data. 2) Notice how the payload drops faster at the beginning and then slows down as the parachute falls through thicker air near the Earth's surface. We were able to calculate that for the first 15,000 feet of descent the payload dropped at a rate of around 100 mph. By the time it hit the ground, it was going 16 mph on the maiden voyage (a little faster on the second flight due to some parachute rope tangles).