This particular launch gave us some more trouble than usual for launch site selection. In the ten days prior to the flight, the forecasted direction was anywhere from ENE to SW but a relatively short distance. Normally that settles down a few days prior to launch, but this time quite a bit of uncertainty remained, especially for the distance away from launch. Since we were mostly looking at directions from southeast to southwest and distances of 8-25 miles, we located a new launch site in Weeping Water and decided on that.

The morning of our flight was pretty foggy, with several areas near the rivers having visibility less than 1/8 of a mile. I contacted Wayne on the area repeater enroute and he reported from the launch site that the sky was relatively clear there. While it's not really a problem for us to launch in fog, it does tend to make everything more damp and slippery to handle.

When I arrived Chuck KD0BWI was also there and Kurt KC0HMI arrived a little later with his son Nate. Our setup and fill proceeded normally.  A couple of cars drive through the park and watched us for a little while - one stopped and I gave them an NSTAR card. We got our Kaymont 1000g balloon launched a little early at 0823 CDT (1323 UTC).

Our forecasted landing was less than 20 miles away, so we were in no great hurry to pack up and leave. After launch, we went back west to Hwy 50 and then south to a gas station on the north edge of Syracuse to await burst. The fog slowly lifted into a stratus and then a stratocumulus layer while we waited, which unfortunately kept us from spotting the balloon while in flight. We spent our time eating a little breakfast and drinking coffee while the balloon leisurely ascended and made several loops off to the south of us. We had some distant simplex repeater contacts (the repeater worked very well once again), including KC0MWM from Grand Island and K9KK in Norman OK. We also heard what we suspect is an Echolink or IRLP output from the Minnesota area, judging from the traffic we heard. I don't think that node's input is on 446.30, as we did not seem to get into the node.

Our 1000g balloon finally gave out after almost two hours of ascent at 1021 CDT (1321 UTC). At just over 750 ft/min average ascent rate, this was one of our slower ascents.

We headed south a few miles and stopped again to see where the landing was going to be. Initially I estimated it would be east of Hwy 50 by about a mile, but the descent was also slower than expected and we drifted west of 50 on the easterly low-level winds. Landing occurred in the middle of a section just after 1100 CDT (1600 UTC).

There was a farmhouse immediately east of the landing site and we got permission to enter the field to look for the payloads. We did not see exactly where the landing was but had continuing transmissions from the payload. I set the coordinates in the GPS, grabbed a HT, and Chuck and I set off across the soybean field to the landing site about a quarter-mile away.

Fortunately it was soybeans instead of corn, so I figured the payload would be easy to spot. We crested a ridge and could see a line of trees with a cornfield behind it. I called to Chuck that the landing site should be near the trees or just beyond into the corn.

As we got closer to the trees a bit of color in the top caught my eye – the parachute. Dang it, we had landed in trees again. After almost nine years of no tree landings, we had our second in the last three flights. I got closer and examined what we faced.

In fact, we had landed in three different trees. The parachute was in one tree, the balloon remnants and main payload were in a second, and the backup payload in the third. The trees they were in were 6-8” in diameter and offered no branches for climbing with ordinary shoes. I called back to Wayne and told him to bring his extension pole to help get the payloads out.

Wayne arrived shortly and began assembling the pole. It's mainly used for putting his Christmas lights up, and has been a good-luck charm for us – we had needed it only once in the 2-3 years we brought it along. But here we were with our second opportunity to put it to use.

With the pole at full extension, we could not reach the payloads. As I was starting to think “chain saw” as a solution, Wayne started yanking on one of the sturdier branches of the tree with the backup payload. Of course – let's see if we can shake the payloads out. The tree was pretty tall and thin, so it readily flexed back and forth. Wayne shook loose the backup payload and it was now in reach of the hook at the end of the pole. After that, it was simply a matter of pulling the works out of the tree (except for the line to the balloon – that broke and the balloon is still in the tree). About an hour after the landing we were back in our vehicles and headed home.

Our camera photos were not the best on ascent – lots of haze due to the low-level moisture and the lower sun angle this time of year. The descent photos were better as the payload tended to look more directly down at times. I was hoping for photos just prior to landing in the trees, but the camera got cold-soaked at high altitude and condensation formed on the lens during the lowest two thousand feet of the flight. The simplex repeater was heard in Norman at S9+20 using 600 mW into a rubber duck at the transmit end and a 10-element horizontal beam and preamp for the receiver. The cross-polarization doubtlessly caused significant signal loss, but was somewhat offset by the preamp. Even so, getting an S9+ signal with 600mW on 70cm over a distance of 380 miles is pretty good.

Aerial photos:

Google Map of flight track:

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The 2009 Great Plains Super Launch was held in Topeka this year, and fortunately NSTAR was able to participate once again, our sixth of nine Super Launches.  After a great set of presentations on Friday, we were fortunate enough to be able to launch from Washburn Tech right in Topeka thanks to some great coordination by Zack W0ZC with Topeka/Billard and Forbes Field. 

Saturday dawned with temps in the upper 50s, a near record low for Topeka on that date.  Skies were almost clear and the winds were very light from the west during the launches.  During our chase receiver setup, we discovered some problems with the TNC not wanting to talk to the USB-to-serial converter.  This was the same setup used just a week before for 09-B and nothing had changed.  After about 20 minutes of rebooting, swearing, and wire jiggling, we were able to cobble together a working setup by using some spare equipment Wayne KE6DZD brought with him.  The rest of the setup and fill went uneventfully and we launched our 1500g Kaymont a few seconds before 1300 UTC (0800 CDT).

Our pre-launch forecast put the landing about 10 miles southeast of Garnett.  Most of the balloons were launched before ours, with only WB8ELK following us.  We headed south of Topeka on US 75 to US 56, then east to US 59.  Both our primary and backup beacons were operating fine and we made some occasional contacts on the simplex repeater, including one to Ralph W0RPK in Indianola, about 200 miles distant.

We headed south on US 59 and stopped just south of Princeton to wait for burst.  While we were waiting and scanning the skies for our balloon, a pair of uniformed state park rangers pulled into the parking lot and asked what we were doing.  We explained that a group of us had launched weather balloons with tracking equipment from Topeka that morning and were waiting for them to come down.  They said they had seen several vehicles with multiple antennas in the area and wondered what was going on.  I suppose since we were stopped at a convenient parking lot, they decided to pull in and ask.

Burst occurred at 1421 UTC (0921 CDT) at 92,119 ft.  We were hoping for a slower ascent rate but didn’t want to undershoot our gas fill too much.  We left about 300-400 psi in the T cylinder and still got over 1000 ft/min for the average ascent rate. 

We stuck around near Princeton for a while after burst, trying to gauge how far south we’d go.  Based on where the other balloons were already going, we thought we’d end up somewhere just east or south of Garnett.  As the payloads passed to our west, we could see it while it was still at 25,000 ft or so, which was unusual on descent.  The payload seemed to brighten and dim periodically, also unusual.

We headed south towards Garnett, and it became clear our landing would be somewhere east of town.  We turned onto the main east-west street on the north edge of town and headed east.  We thought for a while the low-level winds would take us a couple miles out, but then the balloon slowed and we had to turn around and head back to the west. 

The payload was now a couple thousand feet off the ground and some distance north of the road we were on.  Even from this distance we could see a lot of balloon had fouled on the payload lines, but the chute was left pretty clean and open.  We had a nearly perfect photo opportunity as the payloads drifted towards us and finally landed about 100 yards north of where we stopped at 1506 UTC (1006 CDT).

The landing site was a cow pasture ringed with a fence topped with barbed wire.  However, the corner of the pasture had a spot where we could climb over the fence easily enough.  Because the pasture had no associated farm house, nor livestock currently in the pasture, I just hopped the fence and walked the short distance in to retrieve the payloads.

After our recovery, we decided to chase Bill WB8ELK’s balloon to its landing.  We weren’t in too great of a hurry as we estimated his landing would not be far from Garnett.  But his balloon was decending much more rapidly than expected and we raced west out of Garnett to get near the landing.  We weren’t quite fast enough and the landing was a couple minutes prior to our arrival.  After a quarter-mile hike into the soybeans and a quarter-mile back, we had Bill’s payload too.

The GPSL group met at the Garnett Pizza Hut for our victory lunch.  The restaurant crew took the arrival of about 40 people in stride, giving us a party room and were very efficient in providing our lunches.  Afterwards, most of us returned to Topeka and had yet another celebration at the nearby Cracker Barrel before saying our goodbyes until next year’s Super Launch. 

Ground photos:

Aerial photos:

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Below are links to some Google Earth .KMZ files I've made for some past flights.  A couple of the flights include tracks for the chase vehicle - you can see in the animation where the chase vehicle was relative to the balloon at the same time.  I have a simple Perl script which will create the KML files from comma-delimited data.  E-mail me if you are interested.

I found a Joomla plug-in which will show KML in a Google Maps/Google Earth window in each article.  Unfortunately it won't show the exact same KML/KMZ file I have below, but those can also be created with a Perl script.  Eventually this will replace all the Street Atlas map clips I have on the site.

• Flight 00-A
• Flight 00-B
• Flight 01-A
• Flight 01-B
• Flight 02-C
• Flight 02-D
• Flight 02-E
• Flight 02-F
• Flight 03-A
• Flight 03-B
• Flight 03-C
• Flight 03-D
• Flight 03-E
• Flight 03-F
• Flight 04-A
• Flight 04-B
• Flight 04-C
• Flight 04-D
• Flight 04-E
• Flight 04-F
• Flight 04-G
• Flight 05-A
• Flight 05-C
• Flight 08-A
• Flight 08-B
• Flight 08-D
• Flight 09-A
• Flight 09-B
• Flight 09-C
• Flight 09-D