Beyond 62

It’s Legal

The first thing to know is that it is legal. It’s regulated by the FAA under Part 101 Subpart D of their regulations.

If you read the whole Part 101 regulation you’ll notice at the very start that the regulation only applies to unmanned balloons with payloads heavier than 4 pounds. Note that  you should still follow all of the rules in Subpart D to make the experience as smooth as possible.

I was a little worried about talking with the FAA. Especially since I was not sure of the phone number and requirements.

If you were to send a big balloon to Near Space, you would have to contact the right ATC (air traffic control) office. But in our case, the ATC office doesn’t actually have anything to do with small unmanned balloons.

What you need to do is create a NOTAM (Notice To Airmen).

NOTAMs are notifications issued for hazardous reasons, such as:

• Air-shows,
• Parachute jumps
• Closed runways
• Erupting Volcanos
• …

Who do I need to call?

The ATC office I talked to gave me the phone number for Prescott Flight Service Station (877-487-6867).

I believe that they handle all the NOTAM reporting for the West side of the US. Where does West start? No idea, you should call your ATC office to make sure. I know that many people launching  balloons from different states (CA, UT, NV, …) called that specific office.

What does the FAA need to know?

What they ask you differs from one person to another.

What they asked me was:

• Date and time of the launch ?(You need to notify the FAA between 24 hours and 6 hours before the launch)
• Location of the launch? (City, States + GPS coordinates)
• How far it is from any major city, airports, air force base? (It needs to be 5 miles away from everything)
• What is the ascent rate?

That was it for me. It was pretty straightforward.

Be prepared to be asked:

• At what time will it reached 60,000ft up?
• At what time will it reached 60,000ft down?
• At what time will it land?
• Where will it land?

Theoretically, you should also notify the NOTAM station when you actually reach 60k feet up and down, if you lose communication with your balloon, and when your payload has landed. Realistically, no one cared when I called and that was fine by me.

Why 60,000ft? Because most of the air traffic flies below this altitude.

How to choose your launch location and predict the flight’s trajectory?

When looking for your launch site, you need to think about 3 main factors:

1. You must not have any fence, phone pole, electric pole, tall tree around you.
2. You must take into consideration the winds which can carry your payload up to 200 miles away.
3. You must take into consideration the estimated landing area.
4. You must take into consideration the estimated flight path.

1) You really do not want all your work to end up stuck in a tree or attached to a 100ft high electric line.

2) This is critical. There are 2 web tools: This one and that one. Their prediction are, of course, not 100% similar or accurate but they will give you a good idea of the flight direction.

3 & 4) Remember that you need to be able to recover the payload quickly (Batteries might die) and be able to receive signals from the landing location. Avoid highly populated areas or areas with lakes, mountains or dense vegetation.

Note that  you need to make sure your launch site is more than 5 miles away from any airport/AFB.

Great new hope this morning!

I received at 7:42am a manual Check/In message from the SPOT messenger sent with MSP-1.

The location reported is: 38.00134 , -120.80861. About 60 miles south east from our launch site.

The location really is in the middle of nowhere. It’s in the middle of an unworkable field 1.5 mile away from the nearest paved road. There is a dirt road about half a mile away. This area is protected all along by a fence and I have seen cows on Google street view archives which makes me think that it’s a private property used for livestock farming.

Fortunately there are only 3 farms around including one less than 2 miles away.

So my plan is:

1. Go directly to this farm tomorrow morning.
2. Ask if they found the payload
3. If not, whose field it is and ask its owner
4. If the owner has not found it, ask to check out the location
5. If not found at the location, ask at 3rd Farm
6. If the 3rd farm has not found it, post reward poster with contact information

I hope to have more news tomorrow evening.

To take pictures in Near Space, you can either:

• Program a system with servo to push the camera’s shutter automatically or remotely
• Program the camera to take pictures automatically

The latter is by far the easiest way to take pictures in Near Space.

The most famous way to program your camera is to use CHDK. CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) is basically a firmware enhancement software allowing you to control additional features and options of your camera.

The tool supports a lot of Canon digital cameras. So you really want to use a Canon camera. You can find the supported list here.

Note that it’s an enhancement tool, it is non-permanent and non-destructive. You load it from your SD card and it makes no actual changes to your camera and firmware.

Installing CHDK is pretty straightforward if you have an SD card of 4GB or less. You can find the step by step instructions here.

CHDK was created to run on FAT partitions and SD cards that are higher than 4 GB run on FAT32 partitions. For 8GB SD card or larger, things get more complicated. You can find how to install it here.

Note that despite all my best efforts, I have not been able to make it work on my 8GB SD card. It just would not work. (Maybe due to my SD Card brand…)

Once installed, you can create a script to take pictures with the desired settings every X seconds until the SD card is full or until the battery dies. You can find some intervalometer scripts here. Another interesting feature is that you can save the battery voltage and the different temperatures recorded by the camera sensors (optical elements , battery and charge coupled device (CCD)) in a log file. More info under get_temperature.

There are many tools with different pros and cons to track your balloon.

I am only describing the ones I have personally tried. This list will be updated as I launch additional high altitude balloons.

GSM GPS Phone with Tracking Software

A GSM Phone will only work up to a couple of thousand feet high. Therefore it’s mainly a way to find your payload once it landed.

The first criterion to think about when choosing the phone is its service network. You need to verify the phone will have a good signal where you plan to launch and retrieve it.

In the Bay Area Verizon is known to have the best network. However Verizon is known to sometimes block the GPS access requests from third party applications. The type of network (GSM, iDEN, CDMA…) doesn’t matter either as long as the carrier provides an unlimited Internet data plan (GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, UMTS, or HSPA…) for the phone. You’ll need to get a data plan from your carrier for the tracking software to transmit its position over the Internet.

The cheapest, lightest GPS phone I found is currently the Motorola I296. Its previous model which has been used in many high altitude balloon launch, the Motorola I290, has been discontinued. However you can still find on ebay. The I296 costs about $60.

Pros:

• Inexpensive
• Simple and Light

Cons:

• Requires a signal at land site

There are two out of the box tracking software:

• Accutracking
• InstaMapper

I chose Accutracking because it simply offers more features and flexibility than InstaMapper.

• Customizable buffer for store positions while out of coverage (100 max points for InstaMapper)
• More details about the phone at each point (location + GSM Signal strength + GPS signal strength + Battery level)

In this screenshot, the dates in red shows positions that were initially stored because of the lack of coverage

Installing the software on the phone is straightforward. Instructions can be found here.

Satellite Tracker

The cheapest and most convenient is the SPOT Personal Tracker. This tracker does not need cell tower coverage. It communicates its position by satellite. You log on the SPOT website to see the locations it reported.

Note: The Spot Tracker needs to be facing up towards the sky. Make some real tests with your tracking devices activated and inside the payload as it would be during its flight (closed and tapped).

APRS Transmitter (updated 10/02/2011)

To learn the basics about APRS, click here.

An APRS beacon is basically a device (transmitter + GPS) which emits a radio signal containing its current location.

These messages are received by listening radio stations called digipeaters. There are thousands of digipeaters across the US. Digipeaters repeat the message received to other digipeaters until it reaches one radio station that has access to the Internet. These Internet gateways are called an Igates and publish the received messages on the Internet. You can then follow the location of your beacon online at websites such as Google Aprs.

There are plenty of APRS transmitters available. I chose Byonics’ Micro-Trak 8000 FA for its light weight and flexibility. Byonics has other models though.

The Micro-Trak 8000 FA operates on amateur radio frequencies, and requires a valid amateur radio license to use. To get one, take the technician HAM radio license test.  To take it, go here. Most centers propose a one day combo: class + test.
You can just show up in the morning not knowing anything, study in the morning with them and take the test in the afternoon.

You will need a GPS that works above 60,000ft. I bought the Byonics GPS4 (works up to 84km = 275,000 ft).

Pros: