Near Space Exploration Group

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

In collaboration with

National Severe Storm Labs

Norman, Oklahoma

Mission #2 06/?/2007

(Tracker # 2)

John, Ron and Craig,
    Dave Rust promises he will give you better details to put on your
web site.  But just thought I'd let you know some quick details.  Your
tracker led them right to the downed EFM (they had poison ivy and slick
slopes to traverse to get to the EFM...but that's another matter).  
Matter of fact, the GPS from the radiosonde failed at some point and
then the sonde totally quit.  This is unusual and not at all good.  This
also means that the GPS position data from your tracker was the only
position/altitude data they were able to get (i.e. your tracker saved
a-good-part-of the day).  They plan on reusing the tracker with the same
batteries....and plan on not doing a flight without a tracker to
accompany each EFM.  That also means they will need a tracker #3 (and
maybe #4 if I refurbish the just-retrieved EFM) real soon.    Great
going guys.   Hope this effort wasn't too much more than what you
thought you were getting in to.   We really appreciate the effort and
expertise.
 

John et al, your tracker worked very well today.  We were in electric
fields preliminarily estimated at about 120 kV/m, which is even higher
than on the first mission when ltng struck the instr train.  The one
change we did was to put a foam cylindrical sleeve (water pipe
insulation  foam) over the antenna.  That may have helped it to not be
struck by increasing the threshold for corona discharge--but we can't
know for sure.  There seemed to be a lot of ltng around while the bal
was up.  We use the real time display with the bal track and NWS radar
data to keep up with the bal in the storm.  The big item is that the
radiosonde quit so it didn't provide bal location.  The good news is
that the tracker with its gps point every 30 s allows us to analyze the
sounding by providing the location--especially the vertical.  This is an
extra bonus contribution from the tracker!!
 
Thanks again for your collaboration with us.
 
Dave Rust