HALE, The Gathering, T-2 days...

There's been some new information posted at the HALE website that I thought might make for a fun heads-up on the mission. First, the payload allocations for the two balloons has been put up. Each balloon will be carrying a ham radio that will transmit GPS information down, as well as a SPOT transmitter that will be doing the same thing. The first balloon will carry: LUXPAK, Brix-Catcher, Peeps-in-Space, a separate student payload (no name), the "Energizer" communications payload Reel-E, & a video camera payload (a.k.a National Instruments) designed to "look up" through the mission to try to get video of the dynamics at cut down (OK... what it looks like to have your balloon pop 100,000' above the ground). The second balloon will lift several more payloads: a SLR camera payload that has flown before, FLL Team 90, the LEGO Mindstorms Teams submission, Gypsy, Lil' Joe, & a "Giant NXT" communications payload. The communication payloads are fun to see - the HALE team has "skinned" them into a giant-sized NXT and a truly large AA battery.

Note that on mission day, there should be live tracking of both balloons as well as Lil' Joe. The Balloon radio payloads will transmit about once a minute (and will include altitude data), while the three SPOT units will transmit about once every ten minutes, and send back no altitude data (they are there for payload recovery, not primarily airborn tracking). I will be following the mission in detail as well as possible from home, (& blogging it), but you can as well by following the links on the HALE website.

PS- The first picture is all or most of the payloads staged for launch - can you figure out which is which?

--
Brian Davis

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Nino Guba is from Torrance, California, USA. He played with LEGO as a kid, but growing up in the Philippines, it wasn’t something he had easy access to. He only got reintroduced to LEGO when he moved to the US and had kids of his own. When his sons were younger, they received LEGO sets as gifts, but as they grew older, the sets got put into storage as their interest faded. Fast forward a few years, he started coming up with his own product ideas and thought about how he could quickly prototype them. That’s when he discovered LEGO MINDSTORMS—and was hooked! He raided his kids’ old collection, got everything organized, and now he's designing and building his own creations, blending his coding skills with LEGO robotics to bring ideas to life. Tell us about your Ghostbusters Remote Trap Vehicle (R.T.V) project. This project is a LEGO Technic adaptation of the Ghostbusters R.T.V.—a ghost trap converted into a remote-controlled vehicle. Its companion build is a prop replica of the Futaba...

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