[Alas, this post is much delayed. I think I accidentally added it as a "page", instead of a "post". Oops. :-( Anyway, some of this is "wrong", now, but this was the information I had at the time.]
It's 9:20am, Sunday, 2008-05-11. We're at the launch site. We have Internet, though it's a little spotty. Sky's are clear and lovely.
Wind is pretty high, but we found a location for filling in the lee of a small hill which provides significant shielding from the wind.
We've checked in with the FAA, and the MOAR payload is pretty much ready to fly. The connection between the GPS and the transmitter apparently got broken, but nothing a little re-soldering can't fix. All is working correctly now.
The plan for today is to launch MOAR (our attempt at setting a new high-altitude record for an amateur baloon with GPS tracking), and then AHAB2, on which we've decided to significantly reduce the payload and just fly a limited imaging payload, and not much more. Hopefully we can haz pictars.
The AHAB2 payload is going to be given significantly more lift than the MOAR payload, and should be a short trip. We have the ability to capture 90 minutes of imaging, and expect the baloon to have reached its maximum altitude of approximately 84,000 feet, in something under 90 minutes. So we should capture the whole flight up, and some portion of the return to earth, as well.
Tracking for both payloads is visible at:
http://www.hackerbotlabs.com/track/
The upper portion is manually updated data, which we'll use especially while the baloon is at low altitude. Below that, we have links to external sites providing APRS tracking information, which should start getting updated once we get sufficient altitude to be picked up by some digipeaters.
The time is now 9:53am. Internet is spotty enough that I haven't yet been able to load the blog posting page, but I'm writing this post offline, and hope to get it up soon.
