kk9h

We launched AA6DY/4 and KK9H/2 last night at 7pm from Willow Hill Golf Course just North of Chicago Illinois, what a nice place. We never got a reading from AA6DY/4 though the launch looked beautiful.

We got our first reading this morning at 5:58 a.m. Central Daylight Time, 10:58 zulu. KK9H/2 woke up over Ft. Wayne Indiana, well that’s what the map says. I believe it actually woke up near Hershey, Pennsylvania and lost contact East of Ocean City Maryland at 10:18 a.m. 15:08 zulu. Flight 10 hours asleep and 5 hours awake. Total flight time 15 hours and 8 minutes. I’ll send this back to our Technical Team if it’s possible to go from Ft. Wayne Indiana to Hershey Pennsylvania in 2 minutes. First reading was at EN71mb at 10:58 zulu and FN10sg at 11:00 zulu.

Our Technical team had our max altitude at 26,000 feet and steadily losing altitude while awake. Guessing our Max Altitude during the first 10 hours of flight, that’s a tough one and another reason to launch early.

After losing several balloons in the trees leading up to yesterday’s launch, we were looking for anytime, day or evening where the weather would be favorable for a launch. Our best opportunity was 7 p.m. last night. Well, now that we got that evening launch out of our system, we’re going to try again for a morning launch, more data early on.

Looking at our arsenal of somewhere close to 100 balloons,; 36″ Chinese Round pancake, SAG, Yokohama and another 30″ Chinese made Sphere. We’ve had some nice flights with the 36″ Round, albeit, not at the desired altitude. We’re back to the testing phase. I’d like to launch one of each balloon at the same time, I’ll see if I can convince the group.

73, Cary KD9ITO

We had 2 beautiful launches today at our brand new location high on a hill at Willow Hill Golf Course in Northbrook, Illinois. A big thank you to Kari and Kent for letting us use this great location, please visit their website and view their gallery https://www.willowhillgolfcourse.com/

Michael, AA6DY and I met at his home to prepare the balloons. We had just received our shipment of 10 SAG balloons from balloons online. Because we ordered 10, shipping was included. For $166.00 we have the same balloons that Tom Medlin W5KUB was very successful. While I’m writing this, Tom’s balloon W5KUB-110 had flown for 34 days, 60,000 miles and almost 3 laps around the world crashing just west of South Korea in the Sea of Japan. Congratulations to Tom on a wonderful flight. Didn’t take long to get another one up, Tom is now flying W5KUB-111. For more information on Tom’s flights please visit https://ham-tv.com/balloon/

I have written before, that we are part of a larger Pico Balloon community and share information freely. We had nearly flown around the globe on 2 flights using the 36″ round pillow shaped balloon. But to get the altitude and be as successful as Tom and many others, we needed the 32″ Sphere shaped balloon. Currently out of stock https://balloons.online/orbs-32-silver/

I should mention, that we had successful lift off for our two balloons KK9H/2 and AA6DY/4, but will have to wait till tomorrow to get the tracking information We weren’t able to get a signal from the twilight of the 7p.m. launch. As I started to say above that Michael and I met to prepare the balloons. There has been a lot of discussion on how to seal these special balloons. We decided to cut up one of these balloons and test the sealing. The body of the balloon sealed well, and the valve itself sealed well. We first inflated the balloon to test the self sealing and under pressure there was no leaking, but to heat seal we had to remove the paint inside the valve with acetone and a Q-tip. We sacrificed a balloon to test the sealing, pictured below.

The valve showing grey paint
Testing the heat seal after removing paint
Testing the heat seal on the valve only
Testing the Heat Sealing after removing paint
Removing the paint from a new balloon using acetone and a Q-Tip

The balloons that we chose for this launch were sold by balloons online and manufactured by SAG. Unique to this balloon is a valve and a separate tab that we use to tie the package. The Sphere balloon is very close to being round like a ball so having the package holder away from the valve works well. pictured below