… but not always where you want it to.

I picked up my friend, Ken, Saturday morning and we headed to Perth to watch the LASA group launch two balloons: VE3REX-11 and VE3LCA-11.

VE3REX-11 was the first hydrogen-filled (yes, not helium-filled) balloon to be launched from outside Perth. This balloon carried just an APRS tracking device and was hoped to set a new altitude record. Ken and I decided to follow this balloon, so we took off shortly after launch and left the other people to track the other balloon.

We headed to the border crossing at Prescott, stopping at Subway to grab lunch to eat along the way. After an uneventful clearing customs was uneventful (always a good thing), we picked a route that would take us towards Adirondack Park, which looked like the most likely landing zone.

Jim in Morrisburg (VE3XID) and others fed us location updates as we made our way south. Though my mobile radio was providing us real-time location updates for VE3REX-11, Jim was able to tell us what it was over. This allowed us to refine our destination as the balloon continued along its way.

Eventually, the balloon popped at 127 932′ ASL (about 800′ shy of the world record) and the payload started its return to Earth. A couple of thousand feet above sea level, the APRS network stopped receiving updates. This could have meant that the payload had gotten damaged on landing, landed in the water or was simply too far away from the nearest digipeater.

We continued along, hoping that we would hear it as we got closer to its last known location and sure enough, we heard a location update. Making note of the location, we relayed this information to Jim and punched the coordinates into the GPS. It was in the Adirondack Park, not too far (in the grand scheme of things) from the nearest road.

Naturally, we came across a gate barring the road several miles short of the payload. Stopping to ask a hunter for some advice on how to get closer to it, we tried a different access road, but came across more gates.

By this time, there was about 50 minutes of until sunset. We discussed the feasibility of making the 3.5 km hike in, but decided that this was how news stories that start with the phrase “Two hikers were rescued in the forest…” come to be. One of the other teams chasing VE3REX-11 contacted us and said they had parked at one of the gates and were going to hike in. We pointed out that they’d be doing most of the hike in the dark, but they said they were going to press on anyways.

Ken and I discussed what were going to do. Our options were to leave them on their own and head back, or stay at the trailhead and track their progress and be there to relay messages, if need be. Though we were faced with a three-hour wait, we decided that if something happened to them and we weren’t there, that would be Bad.

So we waited. After a while, a third chase team showed up and kept us company while we waited.

The recovery team checked in with us every ten or fifteen minutes allowing us to plot their progress on the GPS.

Being in the middle of the forest, we didn’t have cell phone coverage, so we couldn’t call Ken’s wife to let her know we were still in the land of the living. But, in true amateur radio spirit, Jim (VE3XID) relayed a message for us.

Eventually, the recovery team reported they had found the payload, but sadly it was 50’ up in a maple tree, so they were returning empty-handed. Oh well, these things happen.

They continued to check in with us every fifteen minutes and eventually we saw their flashlights in the distance. Upon their arrival, we packed ourselves up and convoyed out of the woods. We parted company with them in Tupper Lake where they stopped at a restaurant.

We learned on our way back that the other balloon, VE3LCA-11, was on the ground in somewhere in Vermont, but that it seemed that the teams chasing it had run out of daylight before they were able to recover it.

So, although the payloads are still on the ground or in a tree, we know where they are and we have a good idea of what’s needed to recover them.