Project:

On this year’s edition of Asgard our plan is to measure visible light, as well as infrared and ultraviolet radiation. We will also be downlinking our data to aprs.fi under callsign ON6GMZ-11 (11 specifying the object is a sounding balloon).

Day 1:

On the first day we presented our project as usual at the planetarium of the RMI. After which we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for the traditional ice cream. We then had a good night’s rest in preparation for day two.

Day 2:

Day two, also known as launch day, took quite an unexpected turn. When the first balloon was launched it flew right into the first tree on its track. As it turns out, there was a miscommunication between Esero (the organizers of the event) and RMI (responsible for the launch of the balloons) leading to there not being enough hydrogen gas in the balloons. The bigger balloon containing our project took off in a better fashion due to there being a bigger safety margin (thankfully). After its initial ascent, it flew towards the southwest until it reached an altitude of approximately 12 km, after that it turned northbound above the village of Spa due to being in a different atmospheric layer which has a different air circulation. After the balloon popped at an altitude of about 33km it turned sharply back towards the west heading into Germany. Its final landing spot was in a field close to a village called Titz, just East of Keulen. A funny, but also stressful occurrence was when the balloon was flying directly above a NATO airfield.

By the time we returned to the hotel it was 22:30, meaning we had been in the car for over 9 hours.

After this we still had to make our presentation for day three, meaning we stayed up until 03:30.

Day 3:

On day three we got up at 7:30 with a nice 4 hours of sleep. We went to the planetarium to present the results of our experiment. Unfortunately we experienced a poor connection between the sensor and HABduino, meaning most of our data (the different types of radiation) was not broadcasted. This data was lost. We still had the altitude and atmospheric pressure, along with the flight path. After the presentations we ate pizza with the remaining groups and returned to Dilsen, arriving there at around 16:00.

Recap:

Though our project didn’t fully go to plan, we still had fun and learned quite a lot along the way. We also met a lot of new people, both from the organization and the other schools. We also want to give a shoutout to (former) Deezer Yves who helped out with transportation and motivation.