UPDATE .... 7/2/12 ...
Another successful flight to over 100,000 feet with the same APM2 and 3DR radios on board. This picture is the balloon exploding at over 100,000 feet. Total flight was 101 mins this time. The APRS tracker failed this flight but the package was recovered in a 1/2 hr by a citizen calling the phone number on the package !
In about 2 weeks we are preparing to launch the balloon glider combo and fly the glider back by a joystick on APM2 via mavlink.
Earl
Comments
I tested my glider first on a paragliding launch and all worked perfect. Than I launched it with a 300g weather balloon. (The bigger one costs to mouch).
My Glider is a selfmade flying wing similar to the "dizzy bird", but much more faster. I made a room with depron where I put in all the electronics to isolate them a little bit. Next launch I will add also a handwarmer or something similar, because the two keycams didn't record. At launch I switched to RTL and the popped balloon I let hanging on the glieder in flight to home. Next time I will enable only GPS and altitude in the log, because I have enabled all and so there wasn't enough space to storage the flight. But the RTL of the AMP 2.0 worked really good. When I saw the glider again, I switched on the radio and landed it in MANUAL mode.
Earl
Congratulations Earl! It is nice to see" Pioneers of Flight" doing their thing! You can tell how stretched the balloon must have been by the fragments at the end of the tear . One time Air Traffic Control had us on the Look out for a runaway "Mini Blimp" that was holding up a flag at a shopping mall and broke loose . and got up amongst the jets I don't know how high it went before it burst ? do you pop the balloon at 100,000 ? or does it just break from expansion? Have a Good Day!
Hi,
I launched my glider already (my flying wing). It reached about 15000m altitude, but the keycams failed and the storage of the AMP was to small to record all the data. But it returned back to the launch position as I wanted and so I'm very happy to have my glider back again. I switched to RTL and all worked wonderful.
You can get permission for the glider too?
we are in Albuquerque NM USA We file with the FAA, no problem.
on the glider flight, we are going to go in steps like 5000, 10000, 25000, then if we feel ready , the big one at 100,000.
Earl
Here in Canada at least, balloons seem to be an regulatory anomaly, and can easily be made compliant with only a call to the feds giving location and expected flightpath.
This from the blog of a group around Vancouver who have used balloons to launch their autonomous gliders from quite high altitiudes.
http://www.canuck-boffin.net/sonde/index.htm
What country are you in? How do you get permission to fly up to 100,000 feet? Or do you you just do it and claim ignorance of the laws? Well done either way!
Wow what an image! Nice one.
Congrats! Hust can't imagine how high is 100K feet! Do you have som other cool pics to show us?
Cheers,
Emile