[Stratofox Announce] success for Stratofox support of Stanford BioLaunch balloon

[Ian Kluft]

Stratofox supported Stanford University's BioLaunch balloon mission today.
It was launched, flown to 82,000' and successfully recovered.  After a
long day, it's very nice to hear such enthusiastic feedback as we heard
from the folks at Stanford.  Everyone had a good time.  Some participants
came from as far as Petaluma, Placerville and San Luis Obispo, and are
still driving home as I write this.

Stratofox members received continuous tracking data throughout the flight.
With the Sun behind us, there were plenty of opportunities for visual
sightings.  Two Stratofox members saw the balloon burst - Dave Goodin saw
it from Gilroy and Bryan Klofas saw it from Hollister.

The launch site was near the top of Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose,
California.  The landing site was at the top of a tree in Henry Coe State
Park near Gilroy Hot Springs.  (Upper level winds were very light today!)
One of the Amateur Radio telemetry transmitters was on a nationwide
frequency where APRS position reporting packets are automatically forwarded
by Ham volunteers to the Internet.  So one of the public APRS web sites
automatically posted this track of the flight:
   http://maps.aprsworld.net/map/track.phtml?call=KI6GQF-11&skipTable=0&skipBogusCheck=0&showRawPackets=0&start_year=2007&start_month=3&start_day=11&start_hour=19&start_minute=0&end_year=2007&end_month=3&end_day=12&end_hour=4&end_minute=0&date_search=1

Hopefully we'll get photos online this coming week.  Thanks to everyone
who participated, and especially for the extraordinary effort by Stratofox
member Dave Brock N6DCB who coordinated Stratofox's participation in the
mission.  Thanks also to the state park ranger and volunteer who assisted
our access to the landing site.