The Story

Before leaving school, Mr. Brode used current flight data to generate a new prediction. The balloon was rising much slower than student predictions. The predicted landing site was now in a populated area north of Philadelphia. A course was set and Mr. Brode began his journey. After an hour, he stopped at a fast food establishment with WIFI to monitor the location of the balloon. It was moving to the south of the last prediction made at the school. Another stop was made an hour later. By this time, the balloon should have landed. According to the aprs.fi website, the last reported location was west of Lancaster, PA. The altitude of the balloon was 10,000 ft. Twenty minutes later, another check showed the balloon at the same location. There were no more signals received from the tracking device that day. The only thing that could be done was to use the descent rate and determine a region where the balloon probably landed. The last location of the balloon was over a wooded area. Mr. Brode went to this location and obtained permission to search the nearby woods. After walking around for an hour, he returned to his car and drove around the area. Care was taken to avoid wagons driven by the local Amish residents. Mr. Brode used binoculars to search many fields and tree lines. The search was ended at sunset.

On Friday, Mr. Brode checked his phone to show someone the last location of the balloon. He could not believe what was on the screen. There were three data points that were not there the day before. The signal was picked up earlier in the morning and now the location of the balloon was known. It was about 1.8 miles from the area that was searched the previous day. Mr. Brode was able to convince Mrs. Hartman to go on an adventure to retrieve the balloon. They drove to the location southeast of Paradise, PA. The balloon was located exactly were the tracking device indicated. It was spread out is a recently plowed muddy field. All of the equipment was retrieved and there was very little damage to any of the boxes.