Our team member Ken Daniel, K9YO visited his Granddaughter and her 5^th grade class on Friday November 10th 2023, at the First Presbyterian Academy for Greenville and Simpsonville in South Carolina. 

After a presentation on Pico Balloons, the class decided on a name for their balloon, the “Happy Cone”

The Happy Cone 1, flying as K9YO-16 using a QRP Labs U4B and our Standard Solar Array was launched on November 19th 2023, at 8:00 a.m. CDT.

We had a few days of reporting before the Happy Cone went missing.

This is the message Ken sent to the class.

Happy Cone 1 was launched on Nov 19th at 8:00 AM.  It rose quickly to 12,500 m (41,000 ft, over 7 miles).  As it rose, the speed increased to 100 kph (60 miles per hour – speed of a car on a highway).  During the first day, the balloon reported its position every 10 minutes as shown on the map by each circle. The direction of travel followed the Jetstream as shown in the figure. 

The balloon went to sleep at the expected time before sunset, when the sun was too low in the sky to produce power.  After a great first day, things went badly.  The next day we received only one transmission early in the morning and the next day we received only three transmissions.

These were short transmissions that did not contain all the normal data.  We think that one of the cells of the solar panel may have cracked.  Consequently, there is not sufficient power to transmit. 

Happy Cone 1 may still be flying, but it is not telling us where it is.  We will be working to put up another balloon soon.  The launch may be delayed due to the low sun angle (low power) during the month of Jan.

Ken Daniel

This wouldn’t be the first time that our balloons had gone missing. It’s very possible that the balloon is traveling north of the Day/Night Change line and not receiving sunlight to power the solar panels.

We’re calling this balloon Happy Cone 1, because we’re preparing for Happy Cone 2. You can follow the Happy Cone on our Locate and Track page and click “Traquito (by Douglas Malnati) tracking K9YO-16”.

On another note… we received an email from one of our followers, Perry Moore, KD9NGV who launched his Pico Balloon This morning. I spoke to Perry who was very grateful for the information we provided to help him build and launch Pico Balloons.

Perry designed a vertical triangular shaped solar panel to catch the lower sun angles during our winter months in the Northern Hemisphere. (Perry’s information below)

Attaching a pic of the payload.  Wt. is 11.62 grams.   I put it through a 30 hour test last weekend and it is activating at about 15 degrees. Three MPT 3.6-75s.  I’ll be on 10 meters again.  Planning on 5 grams of Free Lift using Helium

Pico Balloon KD9NGV-15, last reported on November 28th at 21:50 UTC at an altitude of 12,350 meters, 40,551 feet, with the sun’s elevation at 3.6 degrees. Congratulations to Perry, KD9NGV for a great build. According to Perry, Pico Balloon KD9NGV-15 should awake near Newfoundland tomorrow morning.

You can follow Perry’s balloon on our Locate and Track page by clicking “SondeHub Balloon Tracker” and follow KD9NGV-15 as well as all Pico Balloons flying around the world.

You can learn more about Pico Balloons starting at our Home Page https://nibbb.org/ at Ken’s Home Page https://sites.google.com/view/picoballoonsbyk9yo/home and one of our earlier teachers, Pico Balloons by Doug and Mark and their new Traquito Tracker.

73, Cary KD9ITO