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"EASIEST RECOVERY EVER!"
By: Mr. John Brode
Science Teacher
After the launch, I went back to my classroom and watched the balloon path on the aprs.fi website. Every 2 minutes, the location of the balloon appeared on the website. The balloon was already over Hagerstown, MD. It was following the predicted path for the next 10 minutes. Then, it started going north of the path. It continued to go further away from the prediction until it burst.
(The red line is the actual path and the yellow line is the predicted path.)
The burst occurred 30 miles before the predicted burst site. The last data from the aprs tracking system occurred when the balloon was about 4,000 ft above the ground. A balloon can travel a great distance in any direction while it drops 4,000 ft. I think that has been a problem with the previous 3 missions. Searching a relatively large area for the balloon has led to unsuccessful recoveries on launch day. This year, the same scenario did not happen.
"Seek and ye shall find". A search for a back-up tracking system led to the SPOT Trace. This device has been around for a while. Many of the reviews stated that the device would not work unless it was facing upwards towards the sky. I had an idea to keep the device in the correct orientation, so I decided to give the SPOT Trace a try. The details of my creation shall not be revealed; however, I will say it involved hamster exercise balls. When the box landed, the device worked as expected. It reported the exact location of our project.
Where did the balloon land this year? After entering the coordinates into Google Maps, the landing site was on a farm about 6 miles south of Gettysburg, PA. The owners also had a lawnmower repair business on the farm. A few clicks later, their phone number was on my screen. After talking with the owner, they went and found our equipment in a field behind his shop. All that I had to do was drive there and pick it up!
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