One of the goals of the Flying Squirrel #4 (FS4) mission was to stay warm. Prior Flying Squirrel flights either froze to death or appeared likely to do so had another failure not terminated the flight early. For FS4, our Squirrel carried it’s own personal heating blanket to keep warm in the sub-zero temperatures. […]
The Flying Squirrel #4 High Altitude Balloon took flight on June 17th, 2019 10:09Am PDT. This movie visualizes the GPS data collected on the flight via a radio link using FT8 telemetry protocol. Flying Squirrel #4 flew to an altitude of 83,936 feet before the balloon burst. Some data was lost during the drop due […]
FS4 launched at 10:09am PDT into light winds. The flight followed the predicted route very closely, however the balloon burst at 83,936 feet altitude. The prediction was for 100,000 feet. Had the balloon reached the predicted altitude it would have followed the route closely to the end. When the balloon burst, it was over the […]
Flying Squirrel 4 transmits FT8 data on 28.075Mhz (Normal 10m FT8 Freq + 1kc) Flying Squirrel sends telemetry data on every even minute. The telemetry is broken into four 15 second FT8 transmissions, Type 1 through Type 4. The Type1 message starts at 0 seconds and send a station ID: KJ6FO FS4 HAB Type 2 […]
A brave new Squirrel – Flying Squirrel #4 It was a busy winter and spring around Squirrel Engineering HQ, but despite a lot of non-squirrel projects a lot has been happening behind the scenes on the next HAB project, Flying Squirrel #4 (FS4) This article will bring you up to date on what has been […]
Two of the primary goals of every Flying Squirrels mission is to: 1. Have Fun! 2. Learn stuff. We certainly had a lot of fun! A bunch of middle-aged hacker Geeks are never too old to play with a big balloon and laugh about it! And no matter the outcomes, we learn and use this […]
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 […]
The graph above shows the ascent of FS3 into the sky, until the telemetry signal was lost. Our daring squirrel was a good climber! Each time stamp (Day:Hour:Min) is 2 mins apart. (Except for few missing data points). FS3 reach a last known altitude of 9,100 meters. (29,855 ft). If the balloon did not […]
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 […]
A Quick Users Guide to the Flying Squirrel #3 High Altitude Balloon Project. The mission of the Flying Squirrels is to promote STEM (Science Technology, Engineering & Math) skills in a fun project environment. All persons interested in Flying Squirrels are welcome to participate in the project. Our third balloon, Flying Squirrel #3 is ready […]