Indian High Altitude Balloon Club

Here, we go. Having a dream dumped deep into your head for past 16 years and finally started to work towards making it come true is not a joke. My Godfather (50 years elder to me, who brought all the interest in me towards electronics and science) once wanted to fool his friends by flying a balloon with some cheap inert gas fitted with a flashing bulb. He actually wanted to fool his friends saying it was a Alien ship. This happened back in 1993, but by that time, it was hard for him to find inert gas to fill his balloon. So he dropped the idea. However he gave me a spark about the idea of flying a balloon too high with some electronics. Today after 16 years, I thought of making it true and started working on it.

Here is my plan. The first mission will have a helium filled weather balloon fitted with the avionics and recovery system. For the avionics, I am planning to have a Micro processor based computer interfaced with 2 temperature sensors (one for internal and another for external temperature.), Pressure sensor, Cameras, Storage chip, humidity sensor, GPS receivers, radio transceiver, and recovery components. The recovery components include buzzers, Balloon cutter and rest will be decided after few tests.

My target is to reach 38 km in altitude, photographs as much as possible and certainly to recover the flight computer. Though I have a telemetry device to transmit all data to ground device, I am also having a recorder which will store all data on-board. The photographs are not transmitted in the first mission. I'll be posting every single step, I move towards with project so the other will be benefited with my experience. If my first 2 missions are a success, then I'll lend any component to people in India who are interested to test it in any part of the country. Ofcourse free of cost. But lets first hope to recover it back.