Dear friends,



BASE 41 went up came down and we brought everything home. Less than five hours and 125 miles on the vehicle for the entire trip.



Only two significant problems.



One - the 144.39 MHz APRS radio had developed some battery problem that
was not noticed during the reprogramming and recharge earlier this
week. The emergency battery pack that was quickly spliced into the
power input failed at a connector to one of the batteries (evidentally
at about 25 kft… Continue

I recently found a free video editing (or Capturing) software. The software is called Video Edit Master V1.8 can be found at:

http://software.tutorialsroom.com/video-edit-master/

This software allowed me to step through the flight video intervals of "Normal Speed", 1 second and Frame by Frame. You can save individual frames as JPGs as you go along.

Here are some pictures I captured:

… Continue

Would anyone be interested in attending a balloon conference next summer? Taylor University is working on developing a balloon conference for faculty and their students June 22-24, 2010 (1/2 day, full day, 1/2 day). Some of the ideas include a balloon launch, poster session, breakout sessions (any ideas - technical development, curriculum???), networking, and grant development. What are your thoughts? We want this to be a way to connect and share information so your input is critical.

On the evening of Saturday October 24, 2009, following recovery of USI's high altitude balloon system late that afternoon, I posted a screen capture of the moment of burst on CNN's www.ireport.com, with a few lines of explanation.

I had recalled that a small group from MIT had posted images a month and a half earlier on ireport of their low cost, high risk balloon flight, which resulted in a lot of publicity. Because we didn't have a still camera on board, w… Continue

With a fortuitous two hour break in a steady rain, USI's fall 2009 High Altitude Ballooning team began rollout for a tethered test of their balloon system this past Thursday October 8 at noon. The test was meant to exercise the team in the runup to the planned flight on Saturday October 24.

This is the first high altitude ballooning experience for all of the student team members, and they coped brilliantly with the challenges of filling the balloon, preparing sample experiment pods and monitori… Continue