First the weather was not as well as was expected, however since the chance of rain was only 10% we proceeded. Also we changed our launch site at the last moment to move our expected landing site into a better location.
We started filling the balloon right away (first mistake). Then we plugged everything in and went to test from the car - and got no packets. Eventually we thought the anteanna was too close to the ground and held it up while testing. We received packets.
Right about then it started to rain.
We hurriedly packaged everythign back up only to realize we left the beacon module outside the box after we just taped it shut. In a rush to launch we taped it to the top of the box.
We then released the balloon and hurried to pack everything back in the car. Meanwhile I relized that the computer was not tracking the balloon, because I forgot to turn a crucial piece of the software on. I started tracking it at about 4000 feet up.
We started moving north east to get ahead of the expected path. The balloon was still headed south west. It was expected to do that until it reached 10k feet or so then head north east. It turned north east as expected and was looking good, if raising somewhat slowly. Then it started going down.
Since it was going down slow we knew the balloon had not burst. Either we underfilled or the rain/weather was making it come down (probably a combination of both). It continued to come down and started heading west (towards Peoria) At around 1000 feet it started up again then down after a few thousand feet of gaining elevation. At this point we just wanted it on the ground.
Then just about the worse thing that could happen happened - it headed towards the airport. It went right next to the airport at only a few thousand feet and then continued west slowly falling. We lost aprs signal at only 75 or so feet off the ground. This was more or less expected as we assumed it was on the ground and we lost signal due to terrain.
We eventually arrived near the apparent landing site and started picking up a strong beacon signal (no aprs data however). This was a good sign as it indicated the balloon was reasonbly close by. We had no luck locating it however. We drove around the area and eventually started using the directional antenna on the handheld radio to try and get a direction to the beacon. It first indicated West. After driving around more the signal was becoming fainter. We started to try and get a better direction with the handheld and now it was pointing north east. We drove a few miles in that direction and took another reading. Always a very faint signal north east.
Eventually we ran into Peoria and no longer could pick up the signal. The only thing I can think happened is that the balloon came down and for whatever reason the gps stopped working. Then it took off again and got sufficent altitude to start heading north east.
We never found it.
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