| WA8LMF Home Page | Main APRS Page | Updated 20 June 2010 |
These are tracks of N1VG's Hamsonde-2 balloon flight in Central & Southern California produced by APRS data transmitted during the flight, and plotted in UI-View with the UI-HeightTrack plugin.
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The balloon was launched from the town of Cuyama, California about midway between the town of Santa Maria, CA and the highway Interstate 5.
Closeup view of launch
track from Cuyama, CA
(Range Scale 3.3 Mi)
Overall track
color-coded by UI-HeightTrack
(Range Scale 20 Mi)
Overall track in
black only
(Range Scale 20 Mi)
The balloon experienced some of the most extreme buffeting and constantly-changing wind directions aloft that I have ever seen during an APRS balloon flight. This enlarged view of part of the middle of the flight shows the constant "whiplashing" of the flight track.
Closeup view of
flight track showing constantly changing wind directions
(Range Scale 2.6 Mi)
Closeup view of
landing track near State Route 166 & I-5
(Range Scale 3.3 Mi)
Vertical Profile of
Flight Generated by UI-HeightTrack plugin for UIview.
This rare UI-View add-on takes position reports for a SINGLE STATION in
UIview and converts them to standard NMEA position reports, simulating a GPS
receiver's NMEA data output.
The data is then output to a virtual COM port so that another "normal" non-APRS
mapping application can display positions and/or track lines of an APRS station.
This was a last-minute thought when I saw the flight heading over the Tehacapi
Mountains and was wondering if it would land in some very rugged terrain.
Track of final part of N1VG-11 flight plotted on Delorme TopoUSA 8.0