Where do they make balloons?
Update: First aerial pictures are coming back from CLOUDY now. See below.
Today’s a big day for amateur high-altitude ballooning. Starting with a launch from OxfordshireBerkshire around 1100 UTC, Friends of Pi Dave Akerman and Anthony Stirk will be dropping tracked paper planes SLEET and SNOW over the low countries and Pi-based payload CLOUDY over Poland, before continuing eastwards as WANNAB1. As always, the Pi in CLOUDY will be transmitting slow-scan digital video (SSDV) footage for your viewing pleasure.
All the places Dave and Anthony will be visiting today
Follow along here:
- Live Map
- Live Images
- Launch Video Stream 1 (static camera)
- Launch Video Stream 2 (body-mounted camera)
- Chatroom
The Earth from (not quite) space, taken from CLOUDY’s Raspberry Pi a few minutes ago.
Today also sees non-Pi flights XABEN 62 and Atlas 6 out of Suffolk, UK and SEBA-6 (Stratosferyczny Eksperymentalny Balon Amatorski – even my Polish is up to that one) out of Gliwice, Silesia, Poland. Judging by the live map SEBA-6 is already aloft, at 7km and climbing. More info on all these flights here. If you want to see more Raspberry Pi High Altitude Ballooning (HAB)…jinks, including Babbage Bear’s record-breaking high jump, check out the other posts under the HAB tag.
16 comments
Marek
Baloons ROCKS All over Europe !
Hope I`d see myself in Warsaw!
All best to you!
IrishFramboise (AlanMc)
Wishing you a pleasant pflight! Enjoying watching in from afar.
Bravo Dave & Anthony.
pasi
Niice project! What power supply are you using in balloonberries?
IrishFramboise (AlanMc)
Some of Dave’s documentation : Raspberry-Jam-Pi-In-The-Sky.pdf
Page 17 mentions Power Supply for instance. Check out the rest of his site.
Luis Delgado
You inspire me. Congratulations :)
Moose
… Marmalade’s from Scotland. *ahem* Sorry.
liz
Clowns are from the circus, barking comes from dogs. :D
buzz
Spaghetti comes from China…Pi is from U.K.
Declan Malone
Hmm.. again with the tmbg reference. Eben and Liz must be big fans :)
Astro
Was on the IRC channel some today. Cloud made it deep into Eastern Europe before the battery pack died and they lost contact. It was still flying east at a pretty good clip, no idea where it came down.
Snow was released over the Netherlands, swooped northward over Amsterdam. It wasn’t recovered, but they have a good idea where it is.
Full write up is here: http://ava.upuaut.net/?p=650
Dave Akerman
My write-up here:
http://www.daveakerman.com/?p=1469
fffff
what about aircraft security? what if a plane hits your baloon? is it legal anyway to fly over peoples heads with amateur constructions like this? I don’t like it.
liz
They get permission from the CAA (or local equivalent), so planes know where the balloons are. It’s worth reading the other posts under the HAB tag; there’s lots of information there.
Dave Akerman
We fly with NOTAMs so yes pilots are made aware. Often they call for more details if they wish to fly through the area anyway. It’s also common for the NOTAM to actually *attract* private pilots who I assume want to see the balloon take off.
Yes it’s perfectly legal, of course. The CAA have a form and procedure specifically for these flights.
Also, the met office launch *thousands* of these things annually, and the only damage they’ve ever managed was a broken greenhouse window.
Michcioperz
Heh, I love it that it all starts in Poland often.
Michcioperz
I mean, stuff happens in Poland. Took me a while to understand the map :D
Comments are closed