With four AirCores in hand, Jack, Bianca, Sonja, James, and Scott headed to Caldwell, KS to launch two more balloons today. We thought we were crafty taking time lapses of our launches, but some employees of KanOkla Networks, who welcomed us to set up camp in their
Our hosts for the day
backyard, filmed our launches from a drone! Thanks KanOkla Networks and KanOkla Design Studio!
Owen and Avery sporting their new NOAA balloon-launching caps
Owen came back with his sister, Avery, to join in on the fun. We love having guest balloon launchers (and now we’re hoping they’ll
Avery sends today’s first payload off
both develop a love for meteorology). The launches went flawlessly (check out the videos below)
And the chases went perfectly, too. Bianca and Sonja only had to walk a short distance through a field to get to our first balloon’s AirCores. With the second balloon’s AirCores landing just a few miles away, James and Scott were able to retrieve their AirCore payload without stepping a foot off of the road. Lucky!
Today was one of the best two-balloon launches we’ve had so far with both payloads transiting almost the same trajectory and the AirCores landing really close to one another. This launch will give us a great comparison to the TCCON and portable EM27 FTS back at the ARM site, as well as provide comparisons between all four of our AirCores.
