Balloon to the Edge of Space

[Iason Ouabache]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5b4_1253879100

A small group of us in the Sherwood Park / Edmonton area decided to start launching high altitude balloons with experimental amateur radio payloads and nickname them BEAR (Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio) after watching others do this and seeing no reason why they should have all the fun. We are not a club or official group, but simply individual amateurs with similar interests, common goal and hope that BEAR projects, which anyone is welcome to participate in, will help promote education, experimentation & camaraderie between all amateurs and amateur radio clubs in the area.

The balloon and camera were launched at 7:44 AM, the balloon burst at 10:51 AM at 107,145 ft. and the camera landed via parachute at 11:40 AM, 89 miles from the launch site after a 3 hr. & 56 min. flight. The camera recorded a total of 4 hrs. & 22 min. of Hi-Def Video before it stopped recording 53 secs after landing, when its 32GB of memory was full. The only thing better would have been if the camera had recorded for several minutes more to captured the sound of us approaching and video of us opening its container.

The video is absolutely amazing. It's crazy that a bunch of amateurs were able to get shots like this.

[AFK]

Pretty cool, though the take off imagery was a bit dizzying.