Misc

Nov 2011 9

High Altitude Balloon Experiments: Part 1

In between my usual adventures I always have about 10,000 projects on the go. Lately some of these projects have been getting rather "lofty", in a series of high altitude ballooning experiments.

My eventual goal is to attach a camera to a helium filled balloon and take photos of the earth from way up above the clouds. It's been done many times before and there is nothing new about it, but it's still fun to try, and not without many many challenges. It doesn't take an genius to work out how to tie a camera to a balloon and let it go; the challenge is to get the camera back again at the end!

Transmitter Range Testing

So for some time I've been pondering how to do this, and then one day something clicked and I started making it happen. The first thing I decided was that I needed some way of knowing where the balloon was, which meant some kind of transmitter. Without a radio license though I am fairly limited in how much power I can transmit with, and power means range...

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