MECSAT

Medgar Evers College, City University of New York

Condor 3—7/30/04

Description

 

This was our second flight at Milton High School in Milton, VT with our partners at U. Vermont and Milton HS. Northern Vermont is relatively rural, has gentle rolling hills and we get the added benefit of the Canadian radio relay network right across the border. We made some changes in our flight communications to facilitate tracking including ramping up the radio to 5 watts. The Vermont cluster was testing the use of a Basic Stamp controller for sequential retrieval of multiple CricketSAT instruments including internal and external temperature sensors, a pressure sensor and an accelerometer. This was our last launch of the summer and our last chance to get the tracking onboard. When we had everything ready to go, we realized that the balloon had a small hole, was leaking helium and we didn't have enough helium to fill a second balloon. One of our students, Marc Moise, decided to patch the hole. On his first attempt he made it much bigger - it went from about an inch in diameter to eight or nine. But Marc persisted and with duct tape and string managed to get a decent patch. We launched not expecting much. We thought the balloon would rise a few thousand feet and then burst. But it kept rising and when it was 10,000 feet up, we jumped in our cars and started chasing it. The tracking was working, we were getting screaming beacons every two minutes. The balloon burst at an altitude of close to 86,000 feet.  We got the ground beacon during the chase and the landing was not far from a dirt road. This was our first hands-on recovery.

 

Launch Information

           Launch Date: 7/30/2004

           Launch Site: Milton High School, Milton, VT

           Launch Coordinates: 44.62855,-73.11821

           Elevation: ~300 feet

           Balloon: Kaysam 1200 gram

           Ascent rate: ~1200 feet/min

           Burst Altitude: Last report before burst—about

                   85,871 feet

           Callsign: KC2NAZ-11

 

Payloads

           Communications:

           Vertex VX-150, TinyTrak3 and Garmin 18-LVC

                   GPS receiver

            Frequency: 144.39Mhz

            Secondary:  (from U.Vermont/Milton HS

            partners):

           -CSAT internal and external temperature sensors

           and pressure sensor

          -accelerometer

          -Basic Stamp controller

           Frequency: 434Mhz