Michael is filling the balloon, little at a time 
A new way to secure, Kapton Tape used by NASA 
Checking the weight 15 grams for the package, plus free lift, total 24.4 grams 
Michael AA6DY tying off the balloon assisted with Stewart KB9LM and Don KK9H holding the tube 
Michael holding the tracker waiting for launch 
And the Release, just beautiful 
There it goes, nice and slow lift
I want to get this out to everyone and will share pictures of our balloon prep and launch
After a long dry spell, we were able to get together to launch KK9H/2 for Don Whiteman. We met at Olson Park in Highland Park, IL at 2:30 p.m. with a small group of avid supporters. As I mentioned in the previous post, though we hadn’t launched in a while, we have been busy preparing. We had a successful launch at 3:00 p.m.
We’ve been looking at getting a balloon that would give us that sweet spot of an altitude close to 40,000 feet. With the research from Tom Medlin W5KUB we purchased a package of the Yokohama 32″ Sphere pictured below.
We purchased 10 of these balloons at $22.00 each, and used one of them to test the best way to seal the valve shown on the lower left hand side. John, KD9THB part of our Technical Team suggested using Kapton tape which is used in the space program. All of our balloons are used in the party industry and are not intended for long flights. The Yokohama we purchased has a small neck coming right up to the body of the balloon, on the end of the valve which we will tape over, seal and punch a hole through the tape to hold our tracker package.
John did some weather and trajectory projections using NOAA HYSPLIT Models see below
Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade 