Go for launch :)
LOHAN's mighty orb launch live NOW
Today's Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) balloon launch is go, and you can follow the ground preparations in Berkshire live right now, right here - courtesy of the chaps at batc.tv There are full details on the mission team and payload here. To summarise, the primary objective is to see whether our Special Project …
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Saturday 1st December 2012 18:02 GMT beast666
Crap coverage
I was particularly unimpressed by the the vid-cast or whatever you want to call it. Endless, boring drives down crappy A-roads. AND then a still can of a wing mirror whilst the *crack* el Reg team went off in some dingy or whatever, leaving the cam behind! If it wasn't for the stimulating chat then I would have chewed my own leg off. Surely a good reason to have an el Reg chat page... thanx Corrine, VinceH and many others. BTW I've not been round to see her yet... Will post here later! x
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Saturday 1st December 2012 19:20 GMT Anonymous Custard
Re: Hi Corinne
We want a full report, presuming you survive.
Was a fun game of working out where the chase car actually was, and as said some good chat. Shame the main event feeds went a bit pear-shaped in significant places, as the others noted.
But overall nice one guys for taking the time and effort to try and include us all, and beer to the guys supplying the feed tech.
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Saturday 1st December 2012 20:27 GMT Phil E Succour
Beer From Me Too!
Not 100% successful, but it's unreasonable to expect that it would be, this was a test flight after all.
Fingers crossed the payload washes ashore or another boat trip tomorrow hauls our plucky playmonaut from the water.
I guess the A-Team are drowning their sorrows in a south coast pub right now...
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Saturday 1st December 2012 22:57 GMT daveake
Re: Bad Planning
We did, of course, use the flight prediction software and we chose an ascent rate, burst altitude and descent rate that gave a dry landing (considerably inland - between Winchester and Petersfield). These parameters are adjustable by choosing the size of balloon, amount of fill, and size of parachute. Our calculations were verified by the actual flight - we aimed for and achieved an ascent rate of 6.5m/s, aimed for a 27km burst and got 27.3km, and aimed for and achieved a 6m/s landing speed. However the wind speeds were higher than the prediction said, meaning of course that the flight travelled further (much further) than the prediction suggested.
Normally the prediction is very good. Probably what happened is that the stronger winds expected for later in the day materialised early.
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Sunday 2nd December 2012 16:15 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Re: Bad Planning
So, apart from the unfortunate splash down due to unpredicted high winds, a first rate success! Congrats to the team. The unpredictable nature of high altitude winds over the UK at this time of year have led even groups of piloted planes to disaster (http://www.4thfightergroupassociation.org/the-morlaix-show.html).
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Saturday 1st December 2012 22:51 GMT beast666
To Whom It May Concern
Well.
I've just got back. No staying the night/weekend. Which is good. No bruises/cuts/scratches...
Disappointed Ashley didn't win. But check this out...
Relax beast (not my real name obviously), sit back make yourself comfortable...
Do you like this? Her top comes off...
Waiting for the I'm a Celeb result...
Never mind that...
Her own Bushtucker trial commenced... Imagine I'm Ashley she says... cool
Charlie wins.
Bushtucker trial succesful! 1 star!
Cup of tea.
Kiss then home.
Jobs a good 'un!
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Monday 3rd December 2012 08:39 GMT Anonymous Custard
Re: Always "Late Delivery" !!
I wouldn't call it an "epic fail" by any means, arguably not even a fail of any kind. The launch worked (albeit a little delayed), and the worst that happened was some glitches in the web feed coverage and it ended up going a bit further than planned and getting a dunking.
But the primary items under test (the launching and SPEARS itself if I understood everything correctly) worked fine, and the other bits are fairly cosmetic. Plus of course by "failing" now rather than during the launch proper, there is time for review, improvement and adjustment.
Overall knowing what the 3G signal strength is in the area they were running around in, I was most impressed by how smooth the video-feed actually was (albeit not quite as nice as some views from the balloon itself would have been, but I guess that's a bit of an ask given the height involved).
And in the end it wasn't as if there was any obligation to do any kind of live-feed at all - par for the course would have been just some pics and canned video of the launch (which I guess we may get anyway as I think I saw Lester running around with a video camera on the feed) and a write-up (which I hope we also get soon).
So again a big well done to the whole team, and here's to an even better flight (and recovery) at the next stage.
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Monday 3rd December 2012 09:48 GMT Phil E Succour
Re: Always "Late Delivery" !!
Whilst waiting for Lester to distil the events into a Reg article, there's a write up here...
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/ukhas/Rfx1Jnv9hZU
and pictures here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveake/sets/72157632136764003/
and a video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jcnJmj0l9I&feature=g-upl
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Monday 3rd December 2012 16:26 GMT daveake
Re: Always "Late Delivery" !!
My chase car has a mag-mount 3G aerial which does reduce the dropouts somewhat.
As for a live feed from the balloon, I have done that before (google "pi in the sky balloon") and may well do it for the next LOHAN flight. It's stills only - we don't have the bandwidth for live video.
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