What can I say, we just love the North Pacific. Our balloon AA6DY woke at 21:12 UTC, 4:12 pm CDT at Grid QL75ip. I was waiting for the 2nd packet which didn’t come till 22:54 UTC. We wish to thank Hisami, 7L4IOU for receiving our signal on both packets from 1835 Km away.

By receiving packets on the 2’s and 4’s, we have our altitude at 14,240 meters, 46,707 feet.

Our general direction is southwest.

Looks like we’ll be changing direction and start heading southwest towards the Philippines, over the next 84 hours. Below is the NOAA Hysplit model from October 8th thru October 12th, the star on the upper right corner is our starting point. The little sliver of land in the upper left hand corner is Naha, Okinawa, Japan.

Our Locate and Track tab are updated for Ventusky Jetstream as of 23:00 UTC, the other data for APRS and tracking AA6DY in relationship to other Pico Balloons around the world will take a little time to update. I’ll continue to update the NOAA Hysplit model and upload any changes.

For those that haven’t been to our home page in a while, we have a new group picture as of today. We’re sorry John Walsh, W9BLN was not able to join us as he’s very active with the Adler Planetarium’s Far Horizon, High Altitude Balloon Project. We have a picture of John and Michael from a previous launch. Please visit our home page https://nibbb.org/ and for information on the Far Horizon’s project, please visit Adler Planetarium Far Horizons John has been focusing his work with the GoNet program. Also, Henry Fiely KD9SRZ, was not able to join us for this picture. Henry is in the 8th Grade at Central School in Glencoe, IL.