KD9ORR circling the globe! You can follow.

If you have not been following Cary Willis’, KD9ITO, posts about the flight of their pico balloon, you have missed a great journey. The balloon has been flying for days now and has floated halfway around the world. Cary runs a little contest for folks to see who can predict where it might be when it awakens everyday. Here is the text from one of Cary’s email posts:

We believe KD9ORR is still flying, just hadn't reported after 03:40 zulu.

Had to get that out of the way so you'd continue reading and now for the recap of yesterday's flight.

KD9ORR woke on Jan 1 2022 at 23:38 with a first clear reading two minutes later at 23:40 z QL86bs. We declared Wendy Berg KD9RDV the winner.

We were getting pretty steady readings 10-20 minutes apart and this balloon was really moving along steadily in an Easterly direction at around 24,000 feet. Then it stopped transmitting at RL26gg 03:40 z.

Actually for us to get a Grid Square two things have to happen, well really three things. The tracker has to wake up, send a signal and receive a signal.

At 03:40 z the Sun was at 28 degrees with at least a good hour of sunlight and more readings, so why did it stop sending and receiving?

We went to the Ventusky site (later learned it was pronounced Ven2Sky) to look at cloud cover and it was heavily cloudy in the area of our balloon and would be for a while.

What was clear was the direction and where we believed it would wake up next, but not willing on giving the cat away, or something about a bag (I think that's the right saying, unless you're adopting a cat), we should give you what we're now using to make predictions (measuring a map with a finger's length only works some of the time)

This project has been a learning experience for me. I didn't know what a Pico Balloon was in May, I really need to thank our original committee for chipping in and sharing research to get this project off the ground so quickly, (more on that later)

http://wsprd.vk7jj.com/ is the site where telemetry starts. There's a short learning curve to make this site work for you but you can't over-tax it, so we only ask for the information to get us a reading for that day.

For this discussion, I went to WSPRD and looked at the last 48 hours starting from Jan 1, 00:28 z to Jan 2, 03:40 z to get a map. The WSPRD site is pretty cool and gives some more information at a glance. From waken in China to sleep in Okinawa, wake again and sleep between the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea, and straight East. Heading somewhere between the Midway Atoll and the Johnston Atoll toward Hawaii.

As we're moving East, closer to the Pacific Time Zone, we expect to be waking up in as little as two hours from now.

So it's time to get to work and start on those predictions. Attached is the map from WSPRD for the last 48 hours. You still need to check the Jet Stream, try getting an average of speed between the altitude of 5500 meters and 9,000 meters, then measure with your finger. We're taking Grid Square only, so more people can participate.

One more thing, if you go to this site, http://wsprd.vk7jj.com/ put in the 48 hour parameters, click on map and see what I have attached below, you can hover your mouse around where you think it is and see a Grid Square at the upper left hand page of that site. No longer needed to go to the QRZ site for mapping, Pretty Cool Aye?

So, I'll let you get to work and I'm grabbing another cup of coffee.

I know I mentioned a few days ago that we weren't planning another launch this year, but there were only a couple days left in 2021. But we are in the New Year and are planning a launch as early as tomorrow at Noon. Sorry with the short notice, but with everything going on with this balloon, I forgot to check Windy.com. Tomorrow is Sunny, with Mild to Moderate winds and really Chilly at around 24 degrees, so we're going to meet, lay it out and run like a kite, release and get somewhere warm. Let me know if anyone's available to assist, and I'll follow up with an email later today if we're a go.

Sunlight Soon!! time to work on today's predictions.

KD9ORR Still Flies!