It appears from the map that your equipment landed in the Adirondack Forest Preserve. It is hard to tell from the scale.

If indeed it is in a tree on public land, leave your trimmer behind. It is illegal — unconstitutional specifically — to destroy or remove any tree, living or dead, on the Adirondack Forest Preserve. Even cutting branches will earn you a ticket and a fine.

That said, rangers will likely help you get it down without running afoul of the law. Check in with the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation before your next trip. The DEC Ranger School is right there in Cranberry Lake, as is the local ranger for that area. The school may WANT to send a team to help get it down, perhaps even as a class project.

If it is on private land, and you have permission to enter, but need help, let me know and I will try to seek some assistance for you.

Best of luck.

Let me know if you need contact numbers or further information.

John Sheehan
Director of Communications
The Adirondack Council
Defenders of the East’s Greatest Wilderness

I heard Barrie (VE3BSB) talking about the maximum altitude issue. He said that the tracker in VE3REX-11 was a basic unit that sent an update at a set frequency, while the unit in VE3LCA-11 is more sophisticated and can increase the beacon rate above a certain altitude. I don’t know what sort of data logging capabilities, if any, the unit in VE3REX-11 has.

The terrain VE3REX-11 landed in is not terribly VHF-friendly. Combine that with a lack of digis in the are and it’s not surprising that there’s been intermittent reception of packets from it. As I mentioned in my post, we didn’t hear from it until we were quite close.

I’m not sure what the recovery plans are for VE3REX-11, but they’re going to have to involve tree climbing equipment and maybe a branch trimmer or similar equipment — being 50′ off the ground poses some interesting challenges. Personally, I can’t mount a rescue mission for a couple of weeks, at best, because I have things planned over the next few weekends. I assume that the LASA group is probably going to coordinate this, but who knows? One thing that would make things easier would be gaining access to the gate so that the hike could be shortened.

If I do decide to mount a recovery expedition, I’ll let you know.

I really enjoyed listening along to the balloon chase.

Bob VA3QV provided a running commentary as things progressed.

I was following along on aprs.fi along with many others.

Congratulations to the team for a new 2nd place record.

I have a couple of questions:

The highest altitude I saw on a beacon was 127 932′ ASL but the balloon may actually have gone higher than that before the next beacon. Will the GPSr have recorded the maximum height, so there’s still a chance that it broke the record??

Also:

I was still hearing packets from both balloons throughout the day yesterday and through the night although VE3REX seems to have finally quit at 2:30am and 4am this morning (when the battery voltage hit 6.8V), but intermittently. VHF propagation changes maybe, not sure why there were periods with no packets being heard.

Finally:

I’d love to tag along when you or whomever else does head down to recover the balloons, unless it is this weekend (Nov 14th) as I am doing a summits on the air activation of Mont Ste. Marie on that day (WX permitting).

- Martin, VA3SIE.