My High Altitude Balloon Flight

There's some clever people on this humble site! Loved it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DBK
PhilMary said:
DBK
I am interested to see how you go on with airplanes as I can see your device went to 100kft that's right through the height that airplanes use?
Phil
Click to expand...
The flight was approved by the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) so they were obviously happy with the plans. But balloons like mine are released umpteen times a day to get weather information. The screen shot below shows these balloons launched in the last 24 hours. Some more info here: https://amof.ac.uk/instruments/vaisala-radiosonde-2/

RS1.png


I know a payload similar to the one I used has been shown to a Rolls Royce turbine blade expert who said if ingested into an engine it wouldn't be catastrophic but the engine might need a bit of TLC afterwards. It was the AA batteries which were the main issue. But I'm not aware of any crashes being caused by these small balloons although a plane was brought down in Germany recently after colliding with a (full sized) hot air balloon. Ultimately, pilots just use their eyeballs I guess.
 
Here are some screenshots from my eldest son's phone which he recorded as we chased after the balloon.

This one at 30,317m not long before burst. It is still going strongly upwards at 5.3 m/s and horizontally at 9.3 m/s. The rate of ascent became faster as it got higher. Less air resistance I suspect. Soon after launch it was below 3 m/s at times.

CJ1.png


After burst the balloon descends under a parachute and the icon on the map changes accordingly - just to make sure you know what is happening. :) The car images are where we were waiting. There are two because I had two tracking systems.

CJ3.png


Once on the ground the icon changes again. The red line is the final part of the flight path. The 157m altitude is of course the height above sea level. :)

CJ2.png


The GPS fixes converted to a KML file create an interesting image of the flight path in Google Earth.

The launch site is on the right. Google Earth must be used to KML files like this because it inserted the pins marked Burst and Landing! The orientation of the map is looking south.

GE-3.png


Viewed from the south.

GE-1.jpg


There was so little wind the balloon went more or less straight up after launch as this close-up of the start of the flight shows. It was nearly two kilometres high before it left the boundary of the launch field!

GE-2.jpg


Because it was still transmitting on the ground it wasn't hard to find but even if we had lost contact with it we knew to within a field or two where to look as the landing site is predicted by the map. You can see this in the screenshot image above with the parachute icon. The landing site at this point was being predicted further north but as the balloon descended the system updated the prediction and eventually was almost spot on.

This image was the last one it took before landing. The corner of the field in the bottom left was the field it landed in. This isn't a very good image, probably due to movement of the camera and the angle of the sun.

14_16_51.jpg


The payload wasn't just transmitting GPS fixes, it also continued to take photographs. :)

Lying on its side sadly no sheep in view.

14_47_51.jpg


An approaching human. :)

14_48_53.jpg


Who picks it up!

P8095711.jpg
 
Last edited:
Once again thank you! (y)

Subscribers  do not see these advertisements

 
  • Like
Reactions: DBK
Been interested in this sort of thing since I found a met office balloon as a very young lad, and received a reward for it's return! Meteorological interest probably started then, and have never lost interest always something new!
Presumably if you carefully balance gas in the balloon against weight of the payload you can adjust rate of ascent and height of burst!
How the hell do you organise your time so well?!!!
 
  • Like
Reactions: DBK
jwells said:
Been interested in this sort of thing since I found a met office balloon as a very young lad, and received a reward for it's return! Meteorological interest probably started then, and have never lost interest always something new!
Presumably if you carefully balance gas in the balloon against weight of the payload you can adjust rate of ascent and height of burst!
How the hell do you organise your time so well?!!!
Click to expand...
Within limits the balloon will go higher with less gas inside it. If you put a lot of gas in it will go up very quickly but burst at a low altitude. The compromise is if it ascends too slowly it will drift a long way before bursting and given we have a lot of sea around here this can be a problem. :) The flight therefore has to stay over land so it can't be too long down here. Typical rates of ascent are between 4 and 6 m/s. I went for 4.2 and it actually achieved close to that on average, slower to begin with then faster towards the end.
 
Fascinating stuff...👍🏼

I’ll be your first aviator..... and probably the last but what a ride...😁

Subscribers  do not see these advertisements

 
  • Like
Reactions: DBK
Amazing - well done (y)
 
  • Like
Reactions: DBK
This is an interesting video of the recent launch of much larger hydrogen filled balloon. It went to over 40Km high.

 
DBK said:
It weighs about a 100g and is mostly 20mm thick expanded polystyrene. It was falling just before landing at 4 m/s (9 mph) which is quite slow. A pigeon or pheasant would do much more damage and they are a lot more common.
Click to expand...

That may be but it doesn't avoid an inexperienced or startled driver slamming on the brakes as they see it approaching the windscreen and causing pile up does it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DBK
nicholsong said:
What dictates the choice of different gases? Cost? Expansion, at different temperatures/pressures?
Click to expand...
Hydrogen is cheapest by a huge margin, you can get a cylinder with almost 9 cu m of hydrogen for the same price as I paid for three cannisters of party gas helium which is 97% pure and gave me less than 1 cu m although that was enough. Pure helium is now very hard to get. But using hydrogen comes with additional costs not least you need a regulator and you don't own the bottle but rent it monthly at a not inconsiderable cost.
Hydrogen gives more lift but not massively. My balloon would probably have gone thousand metres higher on hydrogen. Hydrogen is also easier to keep in balloons, helium is notorious for escaping. :)
 
I've seen a short video taken with an electron microscope, of liquid helium leaking through the walls of a glass test tube !

Subscribers  do not see these advertisements

 
jockaneezer said:
I've seen a short video taken with an electron microscope, of liquid helium leaking through the walls of a glass test tube !
Click to expand...
It seems counter-intuitive that helium is, for want of a better phrase, less viscous than hydrogen but it is. There seem to be two reasons. The first is of course it isn't a comparison between a single atom of hydrogen and a single helium atom. The hydrogen goes bi-molecular and it is H2 versus He. A much more subtle thing is helium has two electrons and these fill the first electron shell and a full or "complete" shell is smaller than one which is in-complete. The result is even if you were comparing single atoms the helium one would still be smaller. The complete shell also has no stray electrons to attach to anything, which is why helium is one of the "noble gases" and is inert. So as it passes through something it has no inclination to latch on to a stray electron attached belonging to another atom. )
 
DBK said:
It seems counter-intuitive that helium is, for want of a better phrase, less viscous than hydrogen but it is. There seem to be two reasons. The first is of course it isn't a comparison between a single atom of hydrogen and a single helium atom. The hydrogen goes bi-molecular and it is H2 versus He. A much more subtle thing is helium has two electrons and these fill the first electron shell and a full or "complete" shell is smaller than one which is in-complete. The result is even if you were comparing single atoms the helium one would still be smaller. The complete shell also has no stray electrons to attach to anything, which is why helium is one of the "noble gases" and is inert. So as it passes through something it has no inclination to latch on to a stray electron attached belonging to another atom. )
Click to expand...
Exactly my thoughts too....😳



😂
 
Every so often you see something that makes you go WOW how amazing,how interesting
iandsm said:
That may be but it doesn't avoid an inexperienced or startled driver slamming on the brakes as they see it approaching the windscreen and causing pile up does it.
Click to expand...
I'm not so sure now...........yes I am............................ ....fantastic
 
iandsm said:
That may be but it doesn't avoid an inexperienced or startled driver slamming on the brakes as they see it approaching the windscreen and causing pile up does it.
Click to expand...

But the pile-up would be the fault of the driver behind for being too close/fast.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: DBK
MyrtleGuru said:
Did you follow these guys? Very interesting.

LOHAN spaceplane project starting to shape up nicely

Initial thoughts on our audacious ballocket
www.theregister.com www.theregister.com
Click to expand...
I haven't seen that before but I know of a project which took a model glider up and then released it. From memory the balloon was launched on the South East coast somewhere and the idea was for the glider to land on mainland Europe. I think it was successful. :)

Afternote: There are legals Issues around launching things from balloons in the uk. This is mentioned in this article.

The Register “SPEARS” Test Flight – Dave Akerman

www.daveakerman.com www.daveakerman.com
 
Last edited:
No 'funster' logo on the balloon would be my only critique.

Very interesting and great photos.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DBK
Campervan_man said:
No 'funster' logo on the balloon would be my only critique.

Very interesting and great photos.
Click to expand...
I did think of approaching Jim for a sticker but I wasn't sure if he would want MHF associated with a disaster if that was the result of the flight!

More mundanely my insurance excluded anything vaguely commercial. :(

Subscribers  do not see these advertisements

 

Join us or log in to post a reply.

To join in you must be a member of MotorhomeFun

Join MotorhomeFun

Join us, it quick and easy!

Join us

Log in

Already a member? Log in here.

Latest journal entries

Back
Top