Stratofox assists with CalPoly/Stanford Research Balloon
March 27, 2004

These are some pictures from Stratofox's participation in the CalPoly/Stanford balloon flight on March 27, 2004. Stanford was learning some tricks that CalPoly had developed for using balloons to test prototypes of future satellite hardware in near-vaccuum and distant weak-signal radio conditions by flying it on a high-altitude balloon.

There were some technical problems on the balloon. Only two data points were received. And even one of those was considered possibly unreliable. Usually you want a whole stream of data points from a flight so you can easily determine which ones line up with each other and cull out the errors from the stream. But with so little information, all we could do was send teams to check both points and see if they could get lucky. The points were nowhere near each other.

The Stratofox team (Sean Lynch KG6CVV and Ian Kluft KO6YQ) were more than 30 minutes drive closer to the data point just north of Santa Barbara. So we checked that out and were in Santa Barbara almost all afternoon. At the southernmost point in our drive, we went through Ventura, 20 miles outside of Los Angeles and indistinguishably part of the LA metro area.

The Cal Poly team went to check the first data point, which was east of Paso Robles, not far from the balloon's launch point. This was known to be reliable in-flight data. But the balloon wasn't expected to have landed near there. As it turns out, it did.

The Stanford team located and recovered the balloon.

The on-board data revealed more information about what happenned. The balloon burst at 75,000 feet. So the balloon never reached the Central Valley. Data during the descent was garbled during what we believe was a rather violent tumble. All the transmitter antennas were broken off during flight and were not found. Stanford was eventually able to get good coordinates from their payload, which had an Iriduim phone. Once in the area, the Cal Poly crew were able to hear their transmitters very weakly, since the antennas were all gone.

Everyone met in San Luis Obispo after the balloon was found.

The day's timeline:

4:05AM

Stratofox team departs San Jose

5:30AM

Cal Poly and Stanford teams meet at Cal Poly campus. Winds aloft forecasts lead them to choose Paso Robles as the launch point in order to have the landing site near Buttonwillow in the Central Valley.

7:00AM

Cal Poly and Stanford teams arrive at Paso Robles.

7:05AM

Stratofox team arrives at Buttonwillow.

7:15AM

Balloon filling begins at the launch site.

8:30AM

The balloon is launched.
The Stratofox team relocates from Buttonwillow to a listening spot 5 miles north along I-5 (basically to get away from radio interference at a truck stop at Buttonwillow.)
Note that up to this point everything has gone according to plan. After this point, almost nothing did. :-) Such is the challenge in aerospace projects...

9:05AM

All the teams receive one packet from the balloon. This is the only APRS packet anyone receives during the flight.

9:30AM

It's been half an hour since anyone has heard from the balloon. Since the balloon was further south than expected at last report, the Stratofox team relocated from their listening position at I-5 Exit 262 (5 miles north of Buttonwillow) to I-5 Exit 225 at SR166.

10AM

Stratofox team arrives at Hwy 166. Phone calls to the Cal Poly team didn't get through - they're probably still driving east on Hwy 41 through the mountains toward the Central Valley. We decided to go back and check our only data point from the balloon near Hwy 58.

10:30AM

The Stratofox team stops in Maricopa (SR166 and SR33 junction) to talk with the Cal Poly team, who has just reached the Central Valley on Hwy 41 from Paso Robles. We can now talk with them on an Amateur Radio repeater with coverage of the southern San Joaquin Valley. They're coming to Maricopa so we decide to wait for them.

11AM

The Cal Poly team informs Stratofox of data they got from Stanford about a possible coordinate on the descent, except that there was concern whether the Stanford team had a bad connection or may not have transcribed it correctly. The coordinate was over the Santa Ynez Mountains north of Santa Barbara. Since we had so little information to go on, it was decided that we had to have teams check each of the two points if the balloon was going to be found today. With the CalPoly team still 30 minutes out of Maricopa, Stratofox took the southern point to check.

1PM

Stratofox team arrives in Santa Barbara. After some attempts to transmit the ping command to the balloon, we stopped for lunch. Then we resumed driving around terrain features to find more vantage points to transmit the ping command. We occasionally could hear someone else sending the ping command, which turned out to be the CalPoly team transmitting 50W into a Yagi from the other side of the Santa Ynez Mountains, bouncing off the terrain. So we were able to confirm that their signal reached Santa Barbara. Of course, there was no response from the equipment to their pings or ours - though if there had been a response, only we were in a position to hear it.

3:40PM

Bryan calls Stratofox to inform us that the balloon was found by Stanford near Hwy 58, near the other data point. All the teams are now heading for San Luis Obispo.

4:30PM

Stratofox team stops in Buellton near Vandenberg AFB to fill the tank. Ian is too tired to continue driving. So Sean picks up the driving from there.

5:30PM

The Stratofox team and PolySat team advisor Cliff Buttschardt K7RR are the last ones to arrive in San Luis Obispo. The Stanford team had already left for home (just north of San Jose) before we arrived. So we never got to meet them. (Well, not until August when we helped rescue some of them from the mud at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.)

6PM

After some talking in the PolySat lab, Bryan, Sean and Ian go get dinner. The rest of the teams are too tired and go home.

7:30PM

Stratofox team departs San Luis Obispo for San Jose

10:20PM

The Stratofox team arrives at Sean's house in the Cambrian Park District of San Jose.

10:50PM

Ian arrives at his house in the Berryessa District of San Jose.

(1536x1024 1146K) (500x333 23K)	This is at a brief stop at an overlook on Hwy 33 enroute to Santa Barbara.
(1536x1024 1045K) (500x333 23K)	This is at a brief stop at an overlook on Hwy 33 enroute to Santa Barbara.
(1536x1024 1734K) (500x333 37K)	This is at a brief stop at an overlook on Hwy 33 enroute to Santa Barbara.
(2048x1360 1989K) (500x332 30K)	This is at a brief stop at an overlook on Hwy 33 enroute to Santa Barbara.
(2048x1360 2091K) (500x332 31K)	This is at a brief stop at an overlook on Hwy 33 enroute to Santa Barbara.
(2048x1360 1385K) (500x332 20K)	Santa Barbara, as viewed from San Marcos Pass Rd. Sean and I took this road to get access to some of the hilly terrain to try sending the ping command to the balloon box, in case it had landed near here. In the distance, Santa Cruz Island can be seen - it's the largest of the Channel Islands off the coast of Los Angeles.
(2048x1360 1943K) (500x332 29K)	Santa Barbara, as viewed from San Marcos Pass Rd.
(2048x1360 1138K) (500x332 16K)	Santa Barbara, as viewed from San Marcos Pass Rd. The Santa Barbara Airport and University of California at Santa Barbara are on the right side of the picture.
(2048x1360 1516K) (500x332 29K)	At the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo. Left to right: Sean Lynch KG6CVV (Stratofox coordinator), Bryan Klofas KF6ZEO (president, Cal Poly Amateur Radio Club), and Ed English, an advisor for Cal Poly's "PolySat" satellite construction project.
(2048x1360 1618K) (500x332 28K)	At the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo. Left to right: Sean Lynch KG6CVV (Stratofox coordinator), Bryan Klofas KF6ZEO (president, Cal Poly Amateur Radio Club), and Ed English, an advisor for Cal Poly's "PolySat" satellite construction project.
(2048x1360 1250K) (500x332 21K)	At the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo.
(2048x1360 1232K) (500x332 20K)	At the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo.
(2048x1360 1325K) (500x332 27K)	The PolySat ground station is under development in preparation for PolySat's launch to orbit from Vandenberg later this year. This is all Amateur Radio equipment, which is the reason why the Cal Poly Amateur Radio Club is involved.
(2048x1360 1125K) (500x332 23K)	Bryan shows Sean the PolySat ground station equipment
(2048x1360 1063K) (500x332 20K)	Simon, one of the students on the PolySat project, shows a full-scale replica of PolySat, a picosat which will piggyback its ride to orbit on a commercial satellite launch later this year. The actual PolySat flight hardware is locked up in the clean room nearby. This shape and architecture is called a "CubeSat", a standard for research satellites which was developed by Stanford University to make it easier for research satellites to find rides to orbit on commercial launches.