Recovery

Before leaving school, one last projection using current data from the aprs.fi website was made. Here are two pictures of that projection.

We left BSHS around 11 am towards Hanover, PA. (about 2 hours from BSHS) While we were in route to the predicted launch site, I received a call from our HAM radio expert (Alex McDonald). He said that the balloon had landed and he gave us the physical address of the closest house to the landing site. When we arrived at that address, we learned that every house on that road had the same number address. They were distinguished by houses A-E. Since we did not know the house letter, we stopped at house A. The owner said that they did not see the balloon land and they would call us if they found it. We went down the road towards the next house. There was a "fork" in the road and we decided to go to the right. The next homeowner gave us permission to search for our payload. We started in the direction towards the last projected landing place. After two hours, we decided to go somewhere that had WI-FI. We ended-up a few miles away at McDonald's. I checked the aprs.fi website and determined the coordinates that were still being transmitted. Back in the car, I entered the coordinates into the GPS that I brought with us. It led us to the same mountain, but it was about one-tenth of a mile further to the west. The easiest way to access the site was to drive to the top of the mountain and work our way downward. We drove to the closest road. I talked with the closest homeowner and they gave us permission to search. Daniel and I split up so we could cover more ground. After about 2 hours, it was starting to get dark so we decided to call it quits for the day.

When I returned home, I called Alex to let him know what happened. He said that I should enter the coordinates into Google Maps. When the image appeared on the screen, I knew exactly where the payload probably was located. We had searched near that location, but we did not walk all the way towards the next house. Remember the "fork" in the road? If we had gone to the left, it would have led us directly to the landing site.

DAY 2

Armed with this new information, my family went to recover the payload. We went left at the "fork" and pulled into a driveway. The homeowner did not appear to be home. We quickly entered the woods behind the house and found the payload almost exactly where we predicted. It was hanging from a tree. The antenna was touching the ground; however, the cooler was about three inches above the ground. The parachute was about 50 feet above the ground. I pulled on the string and eventually freed the parachute and the burst balloon. We took all of the materials back to the car and left before anyone returned. We drove to a nearby shopping center and opened the cooler. Everything was there and showed no signs of damage. I turned the transmitter off. I removed the memory card from the video camera and discovered that there was nothing on it. What happened??? I took the video card out of the camera and put it into my computer. The first file would not oped. It said it was corrupted. There were three more files that did open. They were pictures of the woods from the cooler while it was about 50 feet up in the tree with the parachute. No Flight Pictures???????? I was very disappointed. We drove home that night happy that we found the balloon,but sad about the pictures.

DAY 3

On Sunday, I put the camera memory card into the computer and it detected that some of the files were corrupted. It asked if I would like Windows to repair the files. I said "YES". When it was finished, I immediately opened the file to discover that the camera had worked perfectly. The camera took an image every second so we now have over 7500 still pictures of the entire flight. The camera linked the pictures together into an avi file. It can be played like a movie or you can view each picture frame by frame.

Below are some of our recovery pictures.