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Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Day #3: A Learning Experience

The first group got together at 3:30am and put together a checklist to ensure that we had everything we needed for the first launch. With a lot of excitement and enthusiasm, the group left New Hampton around 3:50 am and drove two hours to the launching site at the Northfield Golf Course in Vermont.



The actual launch was not as successful as the launch test for a of couple reasons:

  1. We did not have enough helium to inflate the balloon as we would have liked. As a result we were forced to remove the New Hampton teddy bear attached to the payload box to lessen the weight with the hope that the balloon would take off. Our high altitude balloon slowly and painfully took off. Again, we just hope that the balloon will get to an altitude in which air pressure will ensure a total inflation. 
  2. The fact that we have yet to receive a signal from the tracking device in the payload box prevents us from knowing the direction the balloon took. Even though we still hope to retrieve the balloon, it will be highly improbable without the tracking signal. Since our prediction was to retrieve the balloon in a location around New Hampton, we hope that someone finds it and contacts us. 
We wish luck to our second group and hope that we will be able to minimize the imprecision which prevented a perfect launch this morning.

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