Lucky Balloon!

If you read the pre-flight article, you’d remember that I ended by saying, “Let's hope for the Luck o' the Irish for the ole' balloon!” As it turned out, this balloon flight definitely needed the luck of the Irish. After a perfect launch into a blue-bird Colorado sky, we casually began to follow the SPOT location updates from the balloon towards the expected southeast landing location. Things were going great, almost too great. We followed it to Kiowa, CO and surmised that it must have been descending based on the time aloft and SPOT update cadence after its high altitude blackout. An impromptu picnic ensued on a prairie hillside while we waited for another SPOT update, but it never came. After half an hour, we decided to continue driving and search for it roadside, but that only got us as far as the Sproch Cemetary for another wait and rest session. But there would be no more updates from the SPOT. It was a beautiful day and we were enjoying ourselves, but it was difficult to accept that the balloon was lost and we might never know why it fell off the radar. After verifying with SPOT tech support that there servers were still functioning, we did another slow road side search while driving back to the last known location. A local rancher allowed us on his land and we fanned out looking for a needle in a haystack, or in this case, a camera in a hayfield. It was amazing how many small objects appeared to be the balloon, its parachute, or the styrofoam package. And there was always one more hill just over yonder that might have hidden our treasure. It was like wandering the desert and coming upon mirage after mirage. We probably walked about half a mile before realizing the absurdity of our search and heading home.
Several days came and went along with spring snow which I realized would have ruined the poor camera as it sat out in the elements. What a sad fate for the tough little Canon SD800. Two trips to the edge of space and then a snowy demise.
Even then, we all held hope that some day several months in the future, a farmer would stumble upon it, give us a call, and we would at least be able to recover the photos on the SD card. What I didn’t expect is that I would get that call on Monday, only five days after losing the package! Our luck had certainly changed for the better, and I immediately drove down to Castle Rock to retrieve the camera package!
It turns out that the package landed less than a mile from the last SPOT update and that if we had kept searching in the same direction, we would have probably found it within 30 minutes! On Thursday evening (the day after the flight), a local rancher was out gathering her cows when she came upon it. She brought it inside that night where it sat warm and dry for the next several days as the wet snow blanketed the fields outside, and then she contacted us on Monday. I couldn’t have been more excited when I got the call about it! I literally jumped up and down in my office and hooted and hollered. I exclaimed that it was better than winning the lottery! It didn’t take long to reach Castle Rock where I offered my sincerest thanks to the rancher for her kindness and honesty in getting the package back to me.
Once again, the photos from the edge of space were absolutely beautiful with expansive views of the snow capped Rocky Mountains and an amazing overflight of Denver. This payload included more sophisticated instrumentation including a dedicated GPS data logger and a separate Arduino-based logger of GPS information, heading angle, pressure, and ambient temperature. As expected, the EM406 GPS on the Arduino did not function at high altitudes, but the Sparkfun GPS logger kept on working and recorded a new altitude record for us of 106,000 feet above sea level!
Of course, we have lots of terrific photos in this Lucky Balloon photo album and an accompanying KMZ file to view the entire flight with geotagged photos in Google Earth.
But the question still remained, why did the SPOT stop sending us position updates? Well, when we opened the package, its LEDs were still blinking in the correct mode, so we know that it was still powered on. We also know that the reentry speed was much higher than the first flight and a hard landing could have possibly caused a glitch. But most importantly (in my opinion), we know that it landed on its side in an open field with a clear view of the sky, and we know that SPOT recommends that it be operated with its antenna facing up and with at least 12 inches separation from any other GPS receivers. So it’s my belief that the combination of radio interference with the other electronics and the poor viewing angle to the sky caused us to sweat it out for five days until our guardian angel delivered the camera back to us. Hopefully, we learned our lesson and won’t need to rely on luck next time!