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?

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Brian Davis

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