BASE 109 is almost completed.  The payloads have been located, but it is in the treetops about  25 meters (80 feet) above ground level.  It will be a fun retrieval.

The flight did end somewhat earlier than expected.  We were using a Cloudbuster 300 gram balloon which had been partially inflated for about 10 days in our basement lab.  We were also trying to use a Doongara cutdown mechanism to terminate the flight.  The cutdown did not happen at the preset time and we were not at the altitude where the pressure cutdown should have activated.  The balloon was carrying more than 800 grams of payload with a neck lift of 1800 grams. (The balloon fill limit is 2000 grams).

Hope to do more post mortem after retrieval.  I did not see the balloon from the ground and it is possible that the cutdown worked, either at an early pressure or via the rapid descent command.

Will try to update more on Thursday when I hope that the recovery will take place.

This was my first experience with the habhub in-flight landing predictor.  The diagonal crossing of the area by Interstate 70 prevented us from seeing the landing since at the last few minutes the prediction moved back northwest of the interstate to within a 100 meters or so of the final landing location.

Did anyone listen to the 20 meter band for W9YJ-14?  I don't have a mobile receiver for that band.  Just curious.  That long dipole did increase the cross sectional probability of catching a tree.

We should be up in the air again next week.

Thanks for the support,

Howard, KC9QBN

On Tue, Jun 21, 2022 at 12:36 PM Garrett, Mark <ma-garrett@...> wrote:

Guess it had a leak and came back down.  Sorry for the short flight.

On Tue, Jun 21, 2022 at 11:10 AM Garrett, Mark via groups.io <ma-garrett=wiu.edu@groups.io> wrote:

What is up with the altitude or should I say the lack of reporting it? 

Mark

On Mon, Jun 20, 2022 at 2:45 PM BASE_DePauw <hlbrooks@...> wrote:

BASE DePauw is planning on releasing a 300 gram Helium balloon around 1300 UTC on 21 June (tomorrow).  The flight is a test run for some radios and the cutdown system.  W9YJ-11, W9YJ-15 and W9YJ-16 will be on APRS at 144.39 MHz.  W9YJ-16 will also operate in the WSPR mode on the 20 meter band (14.097 MHz). -11 is our vintage BigRedBee radio.  -15 and -16 are lightAPRS units from QRP labs.  We will also be flying under our first chloroprene balloon.

We will celebrate the arrival of summer with a flight that should never be more that 25 km (15 miles) from the launch site at DePauw.

Howard, KC9QBN

--

Howard L. Brooks
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
241 Julian Science and Mathematics Center
DePauw University
2 E. Hanna Street
Greencastle, IN 46135

(765) 658-4653
hlbrooks@...

--

Mark Garrett

Tri States Public Radio

WIUM Macomb, IL

WIUW Warsaw, IL

WVKC Galesburg, IL

K292GR Burlington, IA

--

Mark Garrett

Tri States Public Radio

--

Howard L. Brooks
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
241 Julian Science and Mathematics Center
DePauw University
2 E. Hanna Street
Greencastle, IN 46135

(765) 658-4653
hlbrooks@...