[aprssig] A strong argument for a cutdown device

[Robert Bruninga]

You lucky guy!!!  Your coming down within 25 miles of the nearest
anything, and luckily it is a home IGate!  At least you'll be able to
hear down to a thousand feet or so.  Its 1 Am and it will be on the
ground at this rate at 0119 EDT.  Good luck!

BOb, WB4APR

Its falling within direct range of an IGate!!!

On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 11:14 PM, John Gorkos <jgorkos at gmail.com> wrote:
> Our local club did a HAB launch today that went horribly wrong.  Check out
> the track of AB0OO-11 to see what I mean.  After 12 hours aloft, we are
> still getting good positional data from the balloon, but we have no control
> over it.
> We ran out of fill gas and only had about 3.5 pounds of lift on a 3 pound
> payload.  Instead of just aborting, we launched anyway.  The balloon
> averaged about 100 feet per minute of lift, and after 7 hours it had only
> made it to 60k feet.  For the last 4 hours, it's been gradually drifting in
> circles, getting lower and lower.  We're going to lose it somewhere over
> south western North Carolina, and we'll probably never see it again.
> This balloon was flying the new Byonics MT-400 tracker, which is still going
> strong with a Sparkfun >60k GPS (it's been flight tested by us to 93k) on 6
> Energizer Lithium Ultra batteries..  Unfortunately, I didn't include the
> additional battery pack, relay, and wiring needed for a nichrome cutdown, so
> instead of being able to abort the flight at the time of our choosing, it
> continues to drift aimlessly over the Carolina's, along with 2 HD video
> cameras.
>
> If anyone happens across what will probably be a still-inflated balloon, I'd
> really like the memory cards out of the cameras…
>
> John Gorkos
> AB0OO
>
>
>
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