Weather balloon launching? What? For my husband’s birthday last year, our children bought him a group gift! A weather balloon. Somewhere there is a video of him receiving his gift. This is an unusual gift I think. I have never known anyone to receive a weather balloon for their birthday. I am not sure where the original idea came from but Gabriel was the instigator to come up with a plan to make it happen. Everyone else pitched in and it became a reality. Little did I know this was no easy thing to launch a weather balloon. More about the process Lawrence went through later. Now for some Redding history.
The beginning of our balloon launches.
We have had a lot of balloon launches over the years. I believe it all started in the 80s with Azteca Mexican Restaurant in Burien, Washington. Our family has never eaten out very much through the years but Azteca made it very appealing for a family our size. Back then we only had four children. Anyway, back to the story. Azteca had .99 children’s meals on Sundays. The adult meals were large and sometimes Lawrence and I would even share a meal. Every Sunday as we would exit Azteca they would hand each child a balloon. My husband is very creative. Our children probably thought their dad was just a lot of fun. He is a lot of fun but this was his way of getting rid of balloons and having fun. Balloons can last a while until their helium is finally exhausted! So he turned it into a launch party!
Over the years we have had many launches and many stories have come from those launches. Our kids used to put our address or phone number on a card and attach it to their balloons. Sometimes they would add launch times. One year on John Mark’s birthday, we launched a balloon from Redding Mountain. Six hours later I received a call from a teacher in Washington D. C. who found his balloon. So, we have a long history of launching balloons.
Back to weather balloon launching.
Anyway, back to the weather balloon launching. Over the last year, Lawrence has studied how to use this weather balloon and its equipment. At one point he experimented using the tracker by putting it on my car and tracking my movements. It would send him an email with my coordinates and pin on a map each stop.
Not only did Lawrence have to learn to use the tracker and the service. He also had to study to make sure we would not get in the flight patterns at BNA airport. What legalities if any were involved? He had to assemble the frame which would carry the tracker and device which would record the altitude and other measurements as well as the camera to record what was happening from the air. He also had to take into account what the weather would be like. So this was a very in-depth project.
Launch day arrives.
We set the launch date for Sunday afternoon August 9th. The week before we checked out the park and got permission for the launch. Lawrence had conference meetings with individual team members about different aspects and needs of the launch. We notified the Redding Team to meet up at the park for a 1 pm launch. ! It was a very hot afternoon and I was not on the field 5 minutes before I found my first tick. So we got out the Thistle Farms natural insect repellant and sprayed everyone’s ankles. We had a few to decline.
Job assignments were dispersed and filling and attaching the balloon was soon accomplished!. After almost an hour of assembly time and turning the camera and tracker on we were finally ready to launch! Emily Redding the numbers girl was to do the count down. So we counted more than once and cheered and finally launched the giant weather balloon.
In all the study of jet streams and other things to take into consideration, we never once thought there was a possibility of it flying west! And yes it traveled east just a bit and then straight west.
The balloon landed in Primm Springs, Tennessee and we were able to use the tracker and coordinates and go right to the retrieval point. Of course, we ask the homeowner’s permission before we went trespassing on his property. It landed down a steep bank and up the other side where it got caught in a tree on the way down.
We were able to find it fairly quickly with all this techy stuff. Soon all three vehicles were flying down the road where we eventually met up with some of the launch party that did not join in for the retrieval.
We were able to put the SD card in the computer and watch the pictures taken from the flight. We found out that the balloon had ascended 96,500 feet before it burst and headed down with the help of the parachute. Unfortunately, the camera didn’t do as well as expected. There were great footage and clear footage of the land below. The camera stopped before reaching the full altitude. I am not sure whether they figured out why the camera stopped so soon or not. It had new batteries. One theory I think I overheard was maybe the temperature of the batteries caused a problem. Either way, the film was amazing and we had a wonderful day!
I hope you enjoy some of the pictures from our day!
