Author Archives: WB6TOU

For a launch The time and place to launch your picoballoon is important. Things to consider are location, surface wind, cloud cover, the path the balloon will follow during ascent and the path it will follow one at float altitude. Consider the things that can go wrong. The balloon can drag across the ground, snagContinue reading “Choosing the time and place”

Once the balloon is released, you can only watch. If you are using WSPR, it is time to start your tracking software to get the wsprnet.org data and send it to APRS.fi. You can also go to http://lu7aa.org/wspr.asp and enter the data about your launch. If you are using APRS, it will show up onContinue reading “Tracking”

It is important to understand why these balloons do what they do. The latex balloons will rise until they burst. The balloon gets bigger and bigger with the expansion of the gas until the latex fails. They do not float. The superpressure balloon is not stretchy like latex. There is a little stretch but notContinue reading “Superpressure”

The rate at which the balloon rises is useful to know. It allows you to predict when and where the balloon will come to float. If you know when and where you will launch, there are websites that will tell you where you will come to float and which way you will be going. IfContinue reading “The Rate of Ascent”

The free lift is the extra lift that causes the balloon to rise. It is the lift after all assembly and ready to release. This is done when filling the balloon so the weights of the beacon, antenna and harness need to be known. The weight of the balloon itself is not necessary for thisContinue reading “Measuring Free Lift”

The time and place to launch your picoballoon is important. Things to consider are location, surface wind, cloud cover, the path the balloon will follow during ascent and the path it will follow one at float altitude. Consider the things that can go wrong. The balloon can drag across the ground, snag a tree orContinue reading “Choosing the time and place For A Launch”

It is not uncommon, at first, to consider producing your own hydrogen. This has been done successfully by one individual and his balloon circumnavigated the world once. In general the effort is rather big and is just generally a poor idea. If you intend to produce hydrogen with wet chemistry, make sure you know enoughContinue reading “Considerations for generating your own hydrdogen”

These tend not to be the electronics but from not understanding the balloons and how they work. So, the first part of this presentation is to build awareness of what the mistakes might be. If you release a balloon and you had an error is how you prepared and planned the launch, the balloon willContinue reading “General Description of the preparation of a balloon”

It is important to know the volume of a balloon in order to run the calculations in the spreadsheet float1g. That spreadsheet does all the math for you and you need to know the payload weight, the balloon weight, the free lift and the volume of the balloon. The weight of the balloon and theContinue reading “Altitude, superpressure and Volume Calculations”

There are a few surprising things about hydrogen and helium and a few obvious ones. This assumes you will use a cylinder from a welding supply store. The hose for filling can be anything. I use the acetylene line and torch head of an old welding set as it has valves and is handy. TheContinue reading “On the use of hydrogen and helium”