How many other balloons did your HALO II pod "see"?

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Permalink Reply by Howard Brooks on April 6, 2009 at 10:47am

DePauw (BASE 35) HALO ID #2 saw four other balloons:

USI #3 - between 15:51 UTC and 15:55 UTC 38d 20.4439m N 88d 09.4052m W (last of two GPS points)
Valparaiso #5 between 15:47 UTC and 16:07 UTC 41d 18.3113m N 86d 12.5029m W (last of 11 GPS points)
DePaul #6 at 15:51 UTC 41d 00.0015m N 87d 13.7549m W (only GPS point)
Cedarville #000B between 16:35 and 16:49 UTC 39d 26.1462m N 83d 24.3918m W (only GPS point)

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Barnett on April 6, 2009 at 10:48am

We (Bryan College) were the southernmost balloon and our balloon burst a little below 80K ft; we "saw" no other balloons. (Did anyone pick us up?) We launched from Woodbury, TN (latitude 35.8N, longitude 86.1W) and recovered near Sweetwater, TN (approx Latitude 35.6N, Longitude: 84.45W).

We had to go fairly far W of our campus to avoid landing in the mountains of the Smoky Mtns or its foothills, where recovery could have involved hikes of several miles from a road in heavy forest. We sent our chase team to the east initially, to wait for the balloon, with the result that we have no data for the first part of the flight because the chase team's antenna was evidently not close enough.

So—the short story is that we had no communication with others at all, and recovered data only from part of our own balloon’s flight.

Steve Barnett, Bryan College, Dayton, TN

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