Partial Success

Launched at 10:39am.
Recovered at 1:16pm
Reached altitude of 101,529+ feet.
Reached at least 122 mph.
Travelled about 65 miles.


You can view the aprs data here

Things that went wrong:
The Camera! We have no pictures. The program on the camera did not run. We had all sorts of problems with the camera not getting power. We thought it was running but evidently not.

The mapping software on the laptop was correctly showing the balloons position but not the car. This made it hard to figure out where to go. Had to keep referencing a hand help gps.

We lost gps signal for a few mins occasionally. We probably need a bigger antenna on the car.

Traveled much faster then expected when it hit the jet stream (120+ mph). Were playing catchup for a while, but when it hit around 65k feet it started to go back west and moving much slower.


Overall except for the camera it went pretty well. We lost lock around 100k feet and did not pick it up until around 45k feet on the way down. This was probably because of its tumbling and moving very fast it lost the gps signal. Our last point before hitting the ground was 1400 feet. We were then able to drive to that location and reacquire the signal on the ground. Our gps got us within 100 feet or so. It took 10 or so mins to locate it in the wheat field.