Apteryx was the first high altitude balloon that the three of us -- Greg Klein , Alex Martin, and Tim Wheeler -- launched in the summer of 2009. It was designed to be as simple as possible: basically, we wanted to get our foot in the door. The balloon carried a very simple 4 pound payload -- it contained a camera, radio, and a few sensors.

Telemetry served only one purpose for us -- we needed to know where the balloon was (more specifically, where it landed). For tracking, we used a Byonics Micro-Trak AIO APRS radio. The AIO is an one-way radio; it periodically transmits GPS coordinates every two minutes. When it got to above 60,000 ft, the GPS stopped working until it dropped back below 60,000 ft. It came with a rubber-duck antenna which we replaced with a J-Pole tied to the load line. None of us had a cellular plan with internet access, so we needed to find some way to relay the APRS coordinates back to us. We had two implementations of this. Alex was able to rig up a Debian desktop computer running soundmodem to decode the packets coming through on his radio. Unfortunately, we weren't able to power the computer for more than 15 minutes -- we thought that the UPS would last longer than it actually did. Greg wrote a Perl script using the Ham::APRS::LastPacket CPAN module that would a text message to one of us every 10 minutes with the latest GPS coordinates, time, and altitute. For whatever reason, it wasn't reporting accurate, recent coordinates the day of the launch --. it kept reporting that we were still in Cupertino. Ultimately, we had to periodically call somone with an internet connection and ask for coordinates.

The balloon we used was a Kaymont 1500 gram sounding balloon. With a 4 pound payload, the balloon was actually probably too large for our needs; in the future we will be able to purchase a smaller (and cheaper) balloon.

The balloon was launched on September 9th, 2009 from Tres Pinos, CA. We made two huge mistakes on the day of: we underfilled the balloon and misjudged the winds.



As this was the first time any of us had filled such a balloon, none of us knew how much helium to put in it. All of the literature I'd read indicated that a reasonable flight time for such a project would be about 3 hours: two hours ascending and one hour descending. We hit about 5 hours; 4 and a half ascending and half an hour descending. Even though we designed the experiments to only last 3 hours, the camera functioned for the entirety of the flight, and the science payload came close.



We had planned on recovering the balloon in the Central Valley, to the East of our launch site. The land is flat in the Valley, so it would have been quite easy to recover. The wind, however, pushed the balloon North of our lanch site, and the balloon landed in Henry Coe State Park -- a very difficult place to find a balloon.



We had intended on recovering the balloon on the same day as the launch, but we had very poor GPS data of the landing location -- the last coordinate we got indicated the payload was 3,000 ft. above the ground. Fortunately, on Saturday, an APRS digipeter picked up a few readings from our payload: we knew exactly were to look. The payload was recovered on Sunday.



We're not entirely sure how high the balloon actually went. The GPS cut out at 60,000 ft, so we can't rely on that. The lowest barometric pressure sample we recorded with our science payload was 1.86 kPa -- this correlates to about 90,000 ft. The datasheet for the pressure sensor, however, indicates that the readings are only accurate above 30 kPa.



Looking at the information prior to the 60,000 ft GPS blackout, it appears as though the balloon was rising at a rate of 450 feet/minute. Extrapolating from the 4 hour 30 minute time from launch to burst, we get something around 120,000 feet.



We retrieved over 600 sensor readings of external temperature, internal temperature, pressure, humidity, and acceleration. These results are hosted on sensor.network.com. If you want, you can grab a CSV file of our sensor readings here.



Alex stitched together a bunch of pictures from the apex of the flight to form a high-res panorama. It's quite nice; definitely worth taking a look. Apparently it took 8 hours to stich on an 8 core Mac Pro.



We have several thousand pictures -- if you're interested, they can all be found here. Be warned, there are a lot of them, and after you see a few, you'll likely get bored.



I've gone through the pictures and here are a few of the best. Click on any one of them to get a larger version.

Right before Alex cut the line.

Shortly after launch.

Looking at Pacheco Pass and the San Luis Reservoir.

Look closely and you can see an airplane.

A nice view of all of Moneterey Bay.