NOAA

We gathered for the launch of Pico Balloon K9YO-22 on Friday October 3rd 2025 in Libertyville, Illinois. The tracker didn’t report until the next day over Nashville, Tennessee. Now 4 days later, our balloon is near Europe. This isn’t the 22nd launch of K9YO, we use a number after the callsign to help track our balloon which will be described below.

The current flight information will be updated daily on our Locate and Track page, feel free to bookmark this page.

Pico Balloon K9YO-22 asleep at 17:28 UTC

This is the last report of Pico Balloon K9YO-22 before going to sleep. The track starts near Nashville Tennessee on October 4th. The Gridsquare HI51hi tells us the last reported location. The code QF8DHI gives us additional information, the second letter “F” tells us it’s getting 5 volts of power, the letter after the number in this case “D” shows the tracker is actually getting 5.3 volts. B=1, C=2, D=3, E=4, F=5 etc. The track shows red when it’s reporting, green when asleep or not reporting if there are no amateur radio stations receiving and reporting.

Our balloon last reported flying at 12,480 meters or 40,944 feet in altitude, flying at 134 miles per hour. The time showing 12:28 is our local time, Central Daylight Time. In UTC, the balloon last reported at 17:28 UTC (5 hours ahead of CDT)

Below is the projected trajectory over the next 84 hours. The different colors represent 10 different altitudes in 20 meter increments. This is from the Sondehub site, Float link, described below.

Pico Balloon K9YO-22 Projected Trajectory from October 7th 2025 thru October 11th 2025

Throughout this post we will have links in blue to help you navigate our website and the links we use to track our balloon. We will be able to see how many people received and opened this email and have clicked on various links to show us your areas of interest. We won’t know who clicks on a link.

We are the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, formed on June 9th 2021, We build and launch Pico Balloons as part of the amateur radio hobby, our home page is https://nibbb.org/

On our website you can read about our project with pictures through the years. I added a webpage to highlight special projects from our Blog which can be found here Highlights of the NIBBB

Once you get to our home page you’ll be able to follow our project, and learn how to build and launch Pico Balloons.

This is the first time we’re flying our newest in-house designed NIBBB tracker and solar panel package. For this launch the tracker was modified with a supervisor chip to help regulate the voltage before transmitting (pictured below). Our future NIBBB trackers will have a supervisor chip built in.

This tracker is launched vertically with the solar panel package sitting on the tracker like a hat, two solder joints connect the solar panel package to the tracker. With the added supervisor chip and wires, the total package of tracker, solar panels, and 33′ dipole antennas weighed in at 18 grams.

The balloon is a 32″ diameter silver SAG balloon purchased from Balloons Online. The balloon was pre-stretched to 32″ by Ken Daniel prior to the flight. We used Helium filled to lift 18 grams plus an additional 6 grams of free lift.

The solar panels are polycrystalline cells each 2″ x 3/4″ in size. We’re using 8 cells for this solar panel package. We were so concerned about the safe launch of this solar panel package, that Jim Janiak, NE9JJ designed a device to hold the tracker off the ground with a wireless release when the winds were calm. Luckily we were launching in very mild winds, Jim was ready to deploy the tracker launcher (name pending). Look for the upcomming video of Jim demonstrating his tracker launcher.

To get our package to the launch site safely, Michael Seedman, AA6DY is using a coffee can with the plastic lid cutout to hold the tracker/solar panel package in place, and a cardboard flap to hold the coffee can and antennas.

Below are pictures from the build and launch

Ken Daniel, K9YO wating with the balloon — Ken Daniel, K9YO

Joining us for the launch were Ken Daniel K9YO, Michael Seedman AA6DY, Stewart Spies KB9LM, Jim Janiak NE9JJ, Cary Willis KD9ITO, Don Whiteman KK9H and David Detelfsen K9EAD

With everything in place here are pictures of the launch

Traacker and Solar Panel package in flight — Balloon and Tracker package in flight

For tracking our balloon we use several websites that are available on the Locate and Track page of our website. For your easy viewing we have the links below and an explanation of each link.

Sondehub Balloon Tracker To follow all Pico Balloons flying around the world
K9YO-22 APRS.fi To see where our balloon is reporting, the altitude, and the travel over the last 7 days of flight. Click on the balloon to open the info page as seen above.
K9YO-22 on Sondehub similar to the sondehub link above, this will only show K9YO-22. On the left hand side you will see information on this balloon, click on Floats to see where the balloon is headed (Projected Trajectory) over the next 84 hours. Click on Plots to see more data received on this balloon and if you really think this project is cool, you can click on Share which will allow you to share the page by email
K9YO on WSPR Spot Database To see the Amateur Radio stations that report on our location and the distance from their station to our balloons location by km and miles
National Hurricane Center Weather systems over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that may affect the direction of our balloon’s travel
K9YO-22 on lu7aa site Provides more detailed and interactive information on our balloon with additional links. Click on 12 Km winds will open Ventusky which will show the Jetstream at the altitude and location of our balloon. Zoom out, hover your mouse over the area to see the wind speed. Clicking on play will fast forward the jetstream over the hours and days. You can also get other weather information all over the world. This site also shows other Pico Balloons by callsign.

Please play around with these various links, and share with people you know.

To be added as a follower of the NIBBB and recieve these posts when published, send me an email at this link Contact Us or find me on QRZ

We are now flying over darkness and not transmitting. With the current wind speed at 120 mph, we should expect a wakeup in about 8 hours.

We have so many people to thank for supporting our program and our Pico Balloon hobby.

To Douglas Malnati, KD2KDD and for his continued support for the Pico Balloon worldwide Community. For information on his Traquito project please visit https://traquito.github.io/

When we first started our NIBBB project in 2021 we followed his site https://www.picoballoons.net/ by Doug Malnati KD2KDD and Mark Malnati KN4IUD

Please share your comments and questions,

73, Cary KD9ITO

As we reported in our last post, we were ready to launch two balloons last Saturday, August 27th. After completing the Board and getting ready for launch, Michael started testing the tracker and discovered it wasn’t working properly. The night before, we discovered our tracker was only transmitting one packet. We need both packets sent two minutes apart to receive the 6 Grid Maidenhead location, altitude and other data. Not having all the data we needed for a successful launch, we decided to scrub the launch until we could find the trouble.

On our last post we had shown our 3rd party manufactured tracker minus a few chips. Because of the chip shortage, it’s necessary for us to add some our own sourced chips. After spending time looking at the software as a possible issue, we suspected the problem to be a hardware issue. One of the substituted chips was the MS5351 Clock Generator. On our previous trackers, we were using the Skyworks Si5351, however, due to supply chain issues, we ordered the MS5351, thinking it was a plug-in replacement for the Skyworks chip. We found that the MS5351’s didn’t always work. After finding a board that failed consistently, we removed the MS5351 and replaced it with an original Skyworks chip, we retested, and we’re now back in business. We now have two working trackers for our next launch. We also ordered the Skyworks Si5351A-B-GT chips from Digikey to make sure our future trackers will work properly.

We also discovered during this down period, that the two Yokohama balloons that were prepared for last Saturday, were found to be leaking a small amount of gas – about 1g of lift per day. We were planning on using these pre-stretched and filled with the proper free lift gas for this Saturday’s launch. I suppose it was pure luck to discover the balloons had a small leak which would have lead to a failed launch, if we hadn’t scrubbed the launch.

After we discovered these failed balloons, Michael AA6DY and Stewart KB9LM of our Technical team had conference calls with Ken Daniel K9YO and with Tom Medlin W5KUB on our different balloons. Ken has been successful flying the SAG balloons and Tom, the Yokohama’s. While Stewart was able to get the process of pre-stretching and sealing from Ken, Tom shared that the failure rate of a Yokohama balloon was about 70%. While we’re not sure if that’s a failure from launch or cutting short the journey, Tom’s flight 112 has just circumnavigated the world and is currently flying on day 82 with a Yokohama balloon over Canada heading to the north pole.

We have several groups working together to prepare for a launch. After the Balloons, Tracker, Solar Panels and Antenna package are prepared, the last step before launch is to look at the weather and the Jetstream. It is now up to our Meteorological committee to determine whether we are good to go, which we now have.

Our Meteorological committee of Kelsi Mulley KE9LSI (our new General) and her Dad Doug Mulley KD9TPM are providing daily weather reports leading up to the launch. NOAA (National Oceanic and Athmospheric Administration) provides all our models from balloon location for all weather and trajectory. NOAA gives us updates on Hurricanes and Cyclones which may impact our launch as well as a Hysplit trajectory, which shows our projection of travel from a given altitude and location. We start with our launch location and projected altitude and create a model showing the projected path over a 48 or 84 hour period. The NOAA Hysplit Trajectory model takes into account the weather, pressure, and Jetstream, and adjusts the altitude and direction. During the flight this committee will update the Hysplit models.

We are now planning our next launch on Saturday September 3rd 2022 at Willow Hill Golf Course, 1350 Willow Rd. in Northbrook, IL. We will be launching two balloons, KD9UQB for Jim Janiak, and AA6DY for Michael Seedman, and now with the Go Ahead from our committee, we will be meeting at 8:30 am Saturday September 3rd.

So, what do we have in common with Artemis? We research, prepare and test, up to and throughout our launch.

Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade

A Glimpse into the Future

Launch of Pico Balloon K9YO-22, October 3rd 2025

September 1st 2022, Artemis and NIBBB, what we have in common