Weather Balloon Photography
Discussion
MiniMan64 said:
Dave, you appear to be the forum expert in launching balloons space (I love that we have one of those) and I'm looking for some advice. The kit you've been launching seems pretty advanced, small computer boards etc, are there any simpler set-ups/kits to try a slightly smaller scale?
We've got a small bunch of kids at our school who've done Astronomy this year and have been asking such a project and how easy it might be to do. I'm not so familiar with what's out there but having done a little light reading I'm intrigued however I'm also aware with kids involved I'd like to keep it simple so I don't end up doing the whole lot.
Any advice?
Did you ever try this?We've got a small bunch of kids at our school who've done Astronomy this year and have been asking such a project and how easy it might be to do. I'm not so familiar with what's out there but having done a little light reading I'm intrigued however I'm also aware with kids involved I'd like to keep it simple so I don't end up doing the whole lot.
Any advice?
Me and a friend tried this with our kids. There was a huge build up and we ordered in a weather balloon, bought a go-pro, a tracking device and geared up and old phone as a gps tracker.
Big build up to the big day where we hired a helium canister and drove out to our launching pad in Berkshire (after getting permission from the CAA).
Got to our field and the excitement was palpable. 3 months of gathering equipment and relatively huge cost.
Started the inflation. Got the balloon half inflated and it tore in half for no reason whatsoever.
Probably the biggest deflation of my life in every sense of the word.
We loaded the stuff back into the car and went home and never tried it again.
blindswelledrat said:
Got the balloon half inflated and it tore in half for no reason whatsoever.
Wow, never heard of that before. I did help out on a launch recently where IMO it was way too windy but the guy insisted on trying to launch. The wind blew the balloon about and it popped when it touched something sharp.What make of balloon was it?
I have a write-up in this week's Amateur Photographer
Edited by daveake on Tuesday 21st October 12:50
Next week I'm launching what will be my 50'th flight (doesn't time fly?). It's a special one as it's a BBC commission to photograph the eclipse from 30km or so.
The launch site isn't, sadly, the Faroes (where the eclipse will be total) but Leicester Racecourse (which gets a bit less than 90% coverage of the sun by the moon). That site was chosen as the BBC have a "live event" there from 9am to 3pm, and again from 6pm to 9pm. Entry is free. There are some details of the event here.
As well as providing entertainment for visitors, the event will also be used for some brief TV segments. The balloon launch will be filmed and some of that shown in the morning Stargazing show on BBC1 from 9am to 10am. The flight will have 4 video cameras and 3 live cameras sending pictures down to the ground. During the live show they'll switch to me once or twice to see what the live pictures are like. The peak eclipse (for Leicester anyway) is about 9:30am so I expect that one of the segments will be after that.
A chase team will go out to recover the flight, and if they're successful then some of the video will be shown during the evening show on BBC2 from 9pm to 10pm.
The reason for so many cameras is to get different views, with and without solar film filters. One video camera and one live camera will use filters; the rest won't. Also, one video camera will point up to record the balloon burst, and another down to look directly at the ground.
We don't have anything to keep the cameras pointed at the sun, so we can't use long lenses, so the sun/moon are going to be pretty small. So we're not expecting wonderful results from the solar-film filtered cameras, but they're worth a try anyway.
Dave
The launch site isn't, sadly, the Faroes (where the eclipse will be total) but Leicester Racecourse (which gets a bit less than 90% coverage of the sun by the moon). That site was chosen as the BBC have a "live event" there from 9am to 3pm, and again from 6pm to 9pm. Entry is free. There are some details of the event here.
As well as providing entertainment for visitors, the event will also be used for some brief TV segments. The balloon launch will be filmed and some of that shown in the morning Stargazing show on BBC1 from 9am to 10am. The flight will have 4 video cameras and 3 live cameras sending pictures down to the ground. During the live show they'll switch to me once or twice to see what the live pictures are like. The peak eclipse (for Leicester anyway) is about 9:30am so I expect that one of the segments will be after that.
A chase team will go out to recover the flight, and if they're successful then some of the video will be shown during the evening show on BBC2 from 9pm to 10pm.
The reason for so many cameras is to get different views, with and without solar film filters. One video camera and one live camera will use filters; the rest won't. Also, one video camera will point up to record the balloon burst, and another down to look directly at the ground.
We don't have anything to keep the cameras pointed at the sun, so we can't use long lenses, so the sun/moon are going to be pretty small. So we're not expecting wonderful results from the solar-film filtered cameras, but they're worth a try anyway.
Dave
Cheers, it was a lot of fun. The live aspect wasn't nearly as intimidating as I feared, mainly because it's rehearsed to death! Had to cut out some things I really wanted to include, due to time constraints, but overall I was happy with the result.
Got loads of video footage, plenty of which is a lot more interesting than what was shown!
Got loads of video footage, plenty of which is a lot more interesting than what was shown!
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