TABEL-2 Lost
Added On: Apr 24 2006
Added By: ke4pjw
Regarding: TABEL-2
I am sad to announce that the second flight of the Tennessee Balloon Group, TABEL-2.
(Tennessee Area Balloon Experimental Launch #2) is lost.
The last position reported was:
36 02.810N 085 32.910W 9462ft 18mph 171deg. EM76fb
We believe it landed in the vicinity of Burgess Falls Road and Milk Plant Road in White County, Northwest of Sparta, TN.
Decimal Degrees: 36.00713N 85.54033W
Degrees/Decimal Minutes: 36 00.428N 085 32.420W
Degrees/Minutes/Dec. Seconds: 36 00 25.6N 085 32 25.1W
Universal Transverse Mercator: 16S 0631549 3985725
Military Grid Reference System: 16S FE 31549 85724
Maidenhead Grid Locator: EM76fa
At about 79,000 feet there was aperantly a malfunction in the
AA4VU-12 tracker that caused it to continuously transmit a carrier at
5 Watts. This drowned out the <1 watt AA4VU-11 transmitter.
It would seem that something jarred loose on landing as by 1:45 PM CDT everything went quiet.
Because of some conflicting predictions we did not have people in the area to view any part of the descent and because of mistaking the last packet as being 94,000 instead of 9400 feet we searched in areas that were way out of range for possible landings. A search of the area on Saturday afternoon until sundown and for 6 hours on Sunday afternoon.
We have spoken with a few residents of the area and posted a reward poster in a nearby corner Market. We are hoping someone finds it and contacts us.
The use of Hydrogen as a lift gas went well. We had barely enough gas to give us the 3lbs of free lift we were looking for. But Early beacons seemed to confirm we were getting the 1000 fpm ascent rate that we were hoping to achieve.
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TABEL-2 Recovered
Added On: Apr 26 2006
Added By: ke4pjw
Regarding: TABEL-2
I received a phone call yesterday from Shawn Dodd with the Sparta Fire department. He said that someone had left our payload at the fire hall and wanted to know if he should leave it outside for us to pick up. I asked if he could hold on to it and told him about the reward for returning it. Bruce and I drove out and picked it up from Mrs.. Dodd. We were in for a surprise as both of the payloads were there. However, the parachute and other hardware was missing. It was just the payloads. We wanted to know the exact location of the landing however, the Dodd's did not know who brought it to the firehouse. We have a sneaking suspicion that the person looks a lot like this distinguished gentleman.
The payloads did their job and I belive that we have a pretty good understanding of why the backup tracker quit funtioning upon landing. We needed to secure the AA batteries with tape and lock the keypad on the tracker transmitter.
There are some great images recovered from the cameras. Here are a handful of my favorites.
In this shot, in the top left hand corner, you can see the moon out in the darkness of space. This picture was taken around noon.
I believe that this is the storm front that moved in Saturday night/Sunday morning.
Center hill lake.
Robin Midgett's neighborhood. (The launch site)
The images from the horizon camera can be seen here.
The images from the bottom camera can be seen here.
Thanks for everyone's participation in the TABEL-2 flight.
Now is the time to start planning TABEL-3, hopefully we can launch it soon!
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TABEL-2 Update
Added On: Apr 19 2006
Added By: KQ4TV
Regarding: TABEL-2
Launch is still slated for Mt. Juliet:
The TABEL-2 launch will be ~10:00AM outside Mt. Juliet in Robin Midgett's (K4IDC) back yard.
Decimal Degrees: 36.19677N 86.45620W
Degrees/Decimal Minutes: 36 11.806N 086 27.372W
Degrees/Minutes/Dec. Seconds: 36 11 48.4N 086 27 22.3W Universal Transverse
Mercator: 16S 0548890 4005910
Military Grid Reference System: 16S EF 48890 05909
Maidenhead Grid Locator: EM66se
Current predictions are that AA4VU-11 will land somewhere between Celina, Cookeville and Sparta depending on how early we are able to launch.
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TABEL-2 Announcement
Added On: Apr 11 2006
Added By: KQ4TV
Regarding: TABEL-2
Date/Time: Apr 22, 2006 10AM Central Time Mission Location: Spring Hill, TN or Mt. Juliet, TN depending on landing predictions.
Callsigns/Freq/Modes: 144.39MHz APRS AA4VU-11 10 sec. time slot / 144.39MHz APRS AA4VU-12 20 sec. time slot
Webpages: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tnballoon/
http://www.groovin.net/ke4pjw/balloon.
Additional Information: 1500g Balloon.
This flight was postponed from last October.
We are making some payload changes. We will not fly the ATV payload on this flight as we were looking to do last year.
We will be flying two digital cameras. One pointing out the side of the package and one pointing out the bottom.
Both cameras will be controlled by a Basic Stamp controller that Terry Trap (KE4PJW) is building.
We will also have a Holux GM-210 GPS Receiver, OT1x, and an HTX-200
(200mW) on 144.39 APRS AA4VU-11 10 sec. time slot in this main package.
Main objectives of this flight are to get pretty pictures and prove the Holux for flights above 18,000m
We are planning to fly the main APRS tracker as a separate payload.
This package consists of a Rockwell Jupiter GPS Receiver (proven high altitude model), an OpenTracker (OT1), and a Maxon DM-0515 VHF data radio (~5W) 144.39MHz APRS AA4VU-12 20 sec. time slot.
We will be using Lithium AA cells made up in 6V, 9V and 12V packages to power different parts of these packages.
We will use a 1500g Balloon and a sub one pound, 60 inch parachute.
The current plan is to use Hydrogen as the lifting gas.
Total payload weight should be about 7 lbs.
Like TABLE-1 we hope to reach over 100K feet. There is no cut down mechanism.
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