[Stratofox Announce] summary of Friday's BioLaunch balloon flight

[Ian Kluft]

Stratofox assisted Stanford University's Aerospace Engineering Dept
on Friday with tracking and recovery of the second "BioLaunch" balloon.
A diagram of the flight based on its transmitted APRS packets is at
   http://www.stratofox.org/images/biolaunch-flight-ge-20070511.jpg
(Thanks to Stratofox member Dave Brock N6DCB for collecting the data
used in the diagram.)

Craig Anderson N6YXK and James Mack earned their memberships in the
Stratofox core team from their participation in this event.  As our
aerial search crew, they actually made all the difference for the
ground teams to be able to reach the balloon in optimum time.  It
could have otherwise been a tedious ground search situation.

Stanford launched the BioLaunch balloon from the helipad at University of
California's Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton.  The balloon reached a
maximum altitude of 90,000' and landed on top of a tree in a cherry orchard
next to the Mokelumne River NE of Lockeford, CA.  The recovery effort was
a close cooperation between Stanford and Stratofox.  Stratofox teams at the
Lodi Airport helped direct James piloting the plane near the balloon during
its descent.  Craig was the only one who received the payload's last packet
from 75 feet altitude.  James was able to orbit those coordinates and was
first to see the parachute and payloads on the ground, just minutes after
it landed.  Craig "talked in" the ground teams to it.  The ground teams
could not see the payloads until they were underneath them.  First on the
ground at the site was a team led by Stanford's Matt Maniscalco KG6LSA.

We don't know why Stanford's balloons always land on top of trees. :-)
The first BioLaunch balloon in March landed on top of a tree in
Henry Coe State Park after a flight to 87,000'.

The payloads aboard this balloon included satellite electronics being
tested under near-vacuum conditions by Stanford's Aerospace Engineering
Dept.  There were also numerous K-12 student experiments on strings of
"PongSats", flown by arrangement between Stanford and JP Aerospace.
There were redundant Amateur Radio tracking transmitters.  The balloon
landed 65 miles from its launch point, and only 3 miles from Stanford's
predicted landing point.