The Advance

Issue date: 12/8/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Leslie Eickleberry Members of the Kansas Wesleyan University Physics Club and Salina Ham Radio Club launches a balloon from Bissell Field Saturday morning.

An experiment by the Kansas Wesleyan University Physics Club soared Saturday morning thanks to the help of the Salina Ham Radio Club. At about 8 a.m., the group launched a high altitude balloon from the Kansas Wesleyan football field. The balloon initially headed south-southwest due to surface winds, but it soon took an easterly, then northeasterly turn.
"We were unable to find the balloon and traveled as far as Missouri looking before we lost the GPS signal. The balloon ascended slower than anticipated, so it spent more time in the upper level winds," said Dr. Susan McDonald, chair in the Department of Physics. "It was tracked through friends of (ham radio club member) Pete Sias in Iowa and Illinois using the GPS beacon to near Blandinsville, Ill."
Although the balloon is lost for the moment, the flight provided high-flying results.
"The good news is that the balloon ascended for about 4.5 hours at about 350 feet per minute, so our altitude should have been about 95,000 feet," McDonald explained.
The launch and tracking was a KWU Physics Club project with the help of the Salina Ham Radio Club, especially Pete Sias, McDonald said.
McDonald explained that the balloon should reach an altitude of approximately 100,000 feet. The payload consisted of a video camera, a temperature logger, and a GPS tracking device.
"The GPS tracking device allows the tracking team to plot the balloon's location on a laptop so that we can recover the balloon after descent," McDonald explained. "The ascent should take about two hours and the descent about one hour."
Although the balloon was expected to stay in the air for about three hours -- two hours for the ascent and one hour for the descent -- the balloon actually stayed aloft much longer.
McDonald said the experiment is multi-faceted and meant to be a fun way to learn. The group planed to look at a temperature profile of the Earth's atmosphere. Some of the pre-engineering students also used the experiment as their final design project.

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