Partial Success?

Well, the balloon definitely went up and we got some good GPS locations from it. The text messages received from the balloon fairly closely followed the University of Wyoming's balloon prediction tool. The problem is that we stopped receiving texts, the balloon was definitely still on its way up, and it's now past the 4 hour battery life of the payload. Tomorrow we're going to make a futile effort to find where it landed based on the prediction model, but it's pretty well a lost cause now. The worst part is that I completely forgot to write my phone number on the payload, so there really isn't any hope of getting it back. I'm going to send a picture to all the sheriff's departments in the area just in case.
I hope anyone reading this blog has enjoyed the challenges and successes. If I happen to find the payload or if it comes back to me somehow I'll be certain to post it here. The last known location was  46.082375°, -107.913120°

UPDATE...not that good of one....
After searching for the balloon based on the UWYO flight prediction and some extrapolation we didn't find anything. I have sent a text message to the cellular number just in case someone finds it and is clever enough to try the SIM in a phone. I'll leave the SIM active for a month and monitor activity on the line. The flight path and the data received from the flight computer are shown below. Since the altitude reporting from the balloon wasn't working I can't say exactly how high it was when I received the last text, but if the model is any indication it was above 60,000 feet. There was a cell tower almost directly beneath the balloon at that time and the antenna on the balloon was oriented so the major lobe of radiation was directed downwards. I've removed some outlier points from the flight computer reports, but you can see that it followed the UWYO model very closely until the last two reported points. Even at the last two you can see that it was turning the corner like the model had shown. My best guess is that it burst and landed somewhere that there was no cell coverage. I am really kicking myself for not writing my phone number on the payload...lesson learned for next time.
With the balloon searching out of the way I have enjoyed the last three days in Yellowstone National Park with my dad and Arhan. This was the real reason for my trip to Montana, the balloon was just a fun experiment and challenge. I'm considering a second balloon since I have most of the hardware, but next time I'll add in a zigbee radio and a much larger battery.

Purple is the model and the yellow pins are the received data from the flight computer

Yellowstone traffic jam...damn buffalo

Arhan and I at the start of the Blacktail Deer Creek trail

Dad and I at the top of the Beartooth Pass about 10,500 feet elevation

F@#* YOU T-MOBILE!!!!!

We got to the launch site and found that my software wasn't quite working, so we postponed the launch and while working on the software I discovered that I couldn't make CSD calls again... I called up T-Mobile technical support and their response was that I didn't have a T-Mobile phone so they wouldn't support me. The only thing I could think is that no cellular carrier makes their own phone, the product they sell is the network access and T-Mobile was blatantly refusing to support their product. I will never use or recommend T-Mobile ever again. I hope you join me in this effort.
As a backup I am having the balloon send me text messages with the GPS information. It's not perfect, but it should work. Hopefully there will be pretty pictures of space posted here tonight, otherwise I'm going to purchase as many explosive fireworks as I can just to destroy all evidence of my failure hahaha!


UPDATE!!!
The balloon is well on its way. Arhan, my dad, and I are waiting in our hotel in Billings for some final position to be reached. At last record the balloon was at 46.082375,-107.913120. The altitude from the GPS doesn't seem to be working as it is constantly reporting 4092.34 feet. If it would have been at that altitude during its flight there were several 6000 feet tall mountains that it would have crashed into. Some launch pictures and video are below. I'll post up the pictures from the recovered payload when it happens. Wish us luck! I'm still angry at T-Mobile...

A little preflight action with Luke and Arhan

Launch time, Farmer Jim is standing in the back. He just showed up and was very curious and friendly!

How sweet it is

Not only is it Friday, it's the Friday after payday, the weather is perfect, I got off work early, and I'm heading to beautiful Montana in a few hours. Looking at the forecast for the Billings,MT area I see that there are predictions of thunderstorms for the next two days... I'm still hopeful that it will be clear skies tomorrow at 2pm for the launch, but it may be delayed until Sunday or possibly Wednesday if things look cloudy. I'm moving the launch site to the side of Hwy 312 somewhere just north of Fromberg, MT. I'm concerned that the original site is a little too close to the airport and the winds look strong so I'll need to adjust to keep the landing in a cellphone friendly area. I'll post another update tonight when I can feel for myself what the weather is like in Billings.

To all thieves planning on ransacking my apartment:
Do you really want to try stealing things from a guy that designs crazy electronic stuff? Who knows what might be waiting for you inside...

UPDATE!!!
The weather looks a bit cloudy, but the launch will go ahead as planned from Fromberg, MT. The lat/long is 45.413430, -108.889972 which is just a bit south of Montaqua Rd. There is a pulloff on the west side of the road where we'll be in a white pickup filling up a big balloon. The fun should start at about 1:45.

The DC airport didn't have them in my size, but I thought about it haha

Somewhere over the Dakota's dreaming about what the pictures would look like from 3 times this altitude