We packed up our supplies and headed out to Phyllis Rawlinson Park on July 27th to test some of our ideas for how to inflate a balloon, how to measure the lift, how to attach the payload, etc. We learned a LOT and also had a critical failure with our GPS antenna that we’re glad to have done on a test rather than potentially at the real launch, where it would have caused a scrub! We did let several balloons head up (with dummy payloads only), our calculations said that they would pop at ~5000 ft, but that will still higher than we could actually see with the naked eye. Next time let’s bring binoculars! This was so much fun and really has us excited for the actual launch and payload chase.
