Tom Medlin

We started the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade on June 9^th 2021

Without any previous knowledge of this project. We spent the summer researching, and began launching Pico Balloons, 3 months later.

We will be celebrating our 3^rd Anniversary in a couple of weeks on June 9^th 2024. In our 3 years we launched over 35 Pico balloons.

In our early months we were launching on a regular basis, sometimes two or three times a month. With some successes along the way. We had our 1^st long flight in December of 2021, of Pico Balloon KD9ORR that flew 19 days, crossing the International Date Line twice in the same day. Once going east, dropping out of the Jetstream and then going back west and spending 8 days around the Marshall Islands. It was fun watching and reporting on that balloon. We started our website during the flight of KD9ORR. Click here to follow our 8^th launch of Pico Balloon KD9ORR

We had three flights in 2022 that made multiple circumnavigations. Pico Balloon AA6DY launched in September, for 83 days of flight and three times around the world, Pico Balloon K9YO launched in October for 123 days of flight and seven times around the world and Pico Balloon KD9UQB launched from Antarctica in November for 100 days of flight and seven times around the world.

Our Antarctica launch was conducted by Todd McKinney, KN4TPG a student with the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Our other partner on this launch was Tom Medlin, W5KUB who we continue to consult with on our launches.

We launched two Pico Balloons on April 13^th 2024 for Calvin Knowles KD9WNU and his Mom Janet Knowles KD9WVO. Below is our group who participated in this launch. The slideshow of our launch is on our home page https://nibbb.org/

Both balloons stayed pretty close to each other for their flight, but we lost Calvin’s balloon over Ukraine after 5 days of flight. We believe it was a weather that brought the balloon down. Calvin likes to tell his friends that it was shot down.

Janet’s Balloon KD9WVO-11 has been doing very well, now over 43 days of flight and preparing for its 3^rd circumnavigation very soon.

Since our last launch on April 13^th 2024, we also lost communication with Pico Balloon NE9JJ-2 that was carrying a weather sensor built by Todd McKinney, KN4TPG with the University of Alabama in Huntsville. NE9JJ transmitted for 44 days, and 4 times around the world gathering weather data that Todd found very useful. NE9JJ is Jim Janiak who’s callsign was KD9UQB for the Antarctica launch and some others.

Although I haven’t written here in over a month, you can follow our balloons in flight which are updated daily at our Locate and Track page at this link https://nibbb.org/links-to-locate-and-track/

Our website header shows our balloons sharing the skies with other Pico Balloons flying around the world. It’s a big world and a small part of the hobby of Amateur Radio.

Tracking worldwide Pico Balloons is provided by Sondehub which is the 1^st link on our Locate and Track page.

All the pictures from our last launch and group projects have been moved to our home page https://nibbb.org/ Our home page also has group pictures of our NIBBB members through the years, and slideshows of our launches and build projects that I hope you’ll visit and share with others.

We have close to 190 followers here at the NIBBB that receive emails when posts are published. Our most recent followers are from Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany.

We look to our worldwide group of Amateur Radio operators, to help track our balloons, receiving our packets and report the data. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t know where we were, wouldn’t receive important data of our location, and altitude, additional data such as temperature, humidity and pressure at altitude, and how our trackers are behaving during the flight.

Our followers can point their antennas where we’re projected to be, by going to our Locate and Track page for our reported location and the forward trajectory NOAA Hysplit Model, as shown below for Pico Balloon KD9WVO. NOAA provides us with an 84 hour projected trajectory that we update daily.

I’d like to also thank our members of the NIBBB for their dedication, and time.

We’re looking forward to our launches in June for Gordie Mulley KD9TVR and Kelsi Mulley KE9LSI, who’ve been waiting a long time for their launch. Mikaela Streicher, KD9VIW will be launching sometime after June.

Calvin Knowles KD9WNU and Gordie Mulley KD9TVR are finishing the 7^th grade in a week or two. Kelsi Mulley KE9LSI just completed her junior year in high school. Mikaela Streicher KD9VIW just finished her freshman year in college. Elizabeth Ziemer KD9ORR with our original group just finished her junior year in college. Henry Fiely KD9SRZ from our original group is finishing his freshman year in high school and Noah Berg, KD9RDT from our original group is finishing his sophomore year in high school. Congratulations to our younger members of the NIBBB.

We’ll be sharing information very soon on our new tracker which we hope to start launching in July. For now, the group is working on a development board testing the chips and software.

Thank you to everyone around the world who have shared our project with us.

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