Manned Gas Balloon was [aprssig] Airborne APRS

[Stan Coleman N0YXV]

Wow what a site it was to see on my APRS screen here in Central Nebraska. I
didn't even know the Manned Gas Balloon Race existed before I saw them on my
screen on a Sunday afternoon. At first I thought it was the small unmanned
type balloons but when I got to noticing more and more I figured it had to
be something else. Thanks to the comment lines in several of the packets I
was able to do some quick googling to find out what, when where and why.
Several of the balloons appeared to have landed not to far from me. It sure
is nice when people included email address and web pages in comment strings
so those of us not in the know can become educated fast.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: aprssig-bounces at lists.tapr.org [mailto:aprssig-bounces at lists.tapr.org]
On Behalf Of Vic Fraenckel
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2005 1:50 PM
To: aprssig at lists.tapr.org
Subject: Re: [aprssig] Airborne APRS

 

Just returned from ABQ where we participated on the long distance (1000mi+)
manned gas balloon race. Each of the 24 balloons carried a APRS tracker. We,
in the chase crew, tracked all of the balloons with using my D700 and
APRSPoint software. The balloon track was NE thru NM, across the TX and OK
panhandles, NE thru KS, NE and IA into MN. We lost contact with balloons in
the plains states on occasion because of a dirth of Digis, but for the most
part were able to see most of them most of the time. Our balloon landed near
St. Cloud, MN and we were able to track it to its landing site with no
problem as we were within 20 miles it for the last 4-5 hours.  All trackers
were using jpole type antennas dangling from their baskets and most balloons
flew well above 2-3000 feet all of the time and mostly above 9000 feet. 

 

An airplane seems like overkill. Just speculation as I do not know the
situation the OP was facing.

 

HTH

 

Vic

________________________________________________________

 

Victor Fraenckel - The Windman         
victorf ATSIGN windreader DOT com
KC2GUI                                                  

 

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