Turn up the heat and the pressure's on!

After a 3 hour test run of my flight computer and cameras I had a lot of success and one problem. I ended the test by putting the whole payload in my freezer. The flight computer came out just fine, but the cameras shut down from being too cold. I've added insulation and space blanket wrapping to keep them warm, but I don't know if it will be enough for the -50 F temperatures. My freezer read as -2 C (about 30 F). Below are graphs of pressure and temperature during the testing.

Pressure in PSIA

Temperature in degrees C

With the data gathering out of the way I've been covering the payload casing in space blanket to make it reflective to radar. I wouldn't appreciate it if an airplane hit my project, but I think they would be even more angry. I've also done more flight predictions and come up with a tentative launch site. The site is east of Billings just off of the freeway on Yellowstone Trail Rd. You can see the launch spot in the picture below. The other picture shows the University of Wyoming's flight prediction (http://weather.uwyo.edu/polar/balloon_traj.html) and the Near Space Venture's landing spot prediction (http://nearspaceventures.com/w3Baltrak/readyget.pl). The difference is that the University of Wyoming won't let me put in my ascent or descent rates. I expect the actual landing site will be somewhere in-between the two, which would be great. I hope to see a ton of people at the launch site and be completely surprised...by the one person following this blog I thing it's going to be just me, Arhan, and my dad though. I'll post the final launch site as soon as it is solidly established and I'm thinking about a twitter feed.

Launching East of Billings, MT on Yellowstone Trail

The flight predictions have the balloon going further east