Our brave, and lucky squirrel is badly in need of a bath, but otherwise is in good shape and happily resting at home. FS3 launched at 10:29Am Dec 7th, 2018 and was performing very well as it flew over the tall San Bernardino Mountains to the west of our launch point. One hour and 24 […]
Get your 3D googles ready or just download the FS3 KML and load it into Google Earth. The image above shows the FS3 flight path, from a mountain level point to the South looking North. LA, Riverside and “The OC” would be off to the left of this image. The flight was short (Actually the […]
This is a summary of the FS3 flight. More detailed data/analysis will follow, but for those following along, I wanted to let you know how the flight progressed. Curious Squirrels need to know! As mentioned in the more recent Mission updates, Southern California received a good amount of rainfall in the two days before our […]
Good morning Squirrels! Launch day is here! I ran the flight path predictions for this morning and all remains good. The predictions have been very consistent over the week. Our Squirrel is heading South towards the Salton Sea. Squirrels don’t swim well and that is a big area, I hope our pilot avoids a water […]
Weather conditions continue to look good for launch on Friday morning. The approaching storm is predicted to clear out Thursday afternoon and the flight prediction I ran this morning looks about the same as yesterday (Good). Mike KA9CQL and Eric N9RZR have flown 5 similar balloons this year, WarPig-I through WarPig-V, and they shared their […]
In addition to the detailed locations provided by the FSQ telemetry, Flying Squirrel #2 also sent WSPR messages 4 times an hour. WSPR is a very weak signal digital mode, often decoding signals below the noise (i.e. you can’t even hear the signal with your ears). The WSPR mode sends a position as Maidenhead Gris […]
Updated Schedule 5/11/2018 This is the final FS2 Telemetry schedule. The columns labeled “Min” is the minutes into the hour (i.e. 0 = top of the hour) that the scheduled event should happen. The schedule repeats after 30 minutes. Launch is tentatively targeted for some time in May 2018. Stay tuned. Click this link for […]
Weather forecasts continue to be good for launch on Saturday May 19th. Winds are predicted to be light. I ran a prediction comparing a theoretical launch today (May 16th) vs our planned launch on the 19th. I combined both predictions into a single graphic below. As you can see the winds today would carry the […]
Our studious squirrel spent another night hanging out in the yard for final testing. The FS2 hardware is complete and this is the first “On the Air” outside using the 20m dipole antenna. FS2 is hanging from a flag pole with the “balloon” end of the antenna suspended about 25 feet in the air. The […]
Save the date(s) The launch date for FS#2 is set for Saturday May 19th, 2017 10 AM with a backup date on May 20th. The location of the launch will be near Anderson Dry Lake inside the Johnson Valley OHV area. More details, including an exact location, will be published closer to the launch date […]
