UK to Russia - tracked microballoon using one AAA

[Winston]

These microballoons use a partly (barely) inflated with helium 36" round aluminized balloons, party store type without any decorative printing:

The tracker powered with a single AAA:

"And off it went climbing up to about 7km where it entered a lovely float, the speed peaked at 175kmph (just over 100mph) as it sped towards Europe. Floating through the night over Germany I woke up on Sunday morning to find it had been tracked almost continuously through the night and was in Romania. Fortunately we managed to muster enough trackers to follow it all the way to the Ukraine where it was tracked by UR6ISU and UY0LL and as it entered southern Russia. Finally around 14:59UTC on Sunday the battery finally died at 7.5km just after entering Russia reporting a final battery voltage of 776mV, 8 satellites and situation normal. I have no reason to believe the balloon didn’t carry on through the night.

So covering an impressive greater circle distance of 2900km (3rd in the records) and averaging over 100kmph in 26 hours one could call this a successful test!"

https://ava.upuaut.net/?p=694

 

[GregGleason]

Congrats!

Did it vary much from the 7km altitude?

Greg

 

[MarkH]

Wow, that's pretty cool.

Based on the title, I'm assuming the reason for the custom hardware vs. buying an available unit (like a Big Red Bee GPS), other than cost, is to reduce power consumption and hence weight in order to run off a AAA battery. With the exception of the AAA power, couldn't this be accomplished (trans continental balloon tracking) with a Big Red Bee GPS ? Not trying to be a critic... just trying to understand. Thanks.

 

[Reinhard]

Now, this is a sweet little tracker.

The Big Red Bee has also been successfully used in bigger balloons:
https://www.cnsp-inc.com/cnsp-18/

Reinhard

 

[bobkrech]

Wow, that's pretty cool.

Based on the title, I'm assuming the reason for the custom hardware vs. buying an available unit (like a Big Red Bee GPS), other than cost, is to reduce power consumption and hence weight in order to run off a AAA battery. With the exception of the AAA power, couldn't this be accomplished (trans continental balloon tracking) with a Big Red Bee GPS? Not trying to be a critic... just trying to understand. Thanks.

The person who designed and built the tracker is British. https://ava.upuaut.net/?p=675

Bob