Heavy device
Let the Helium out
It is a bit sad, but let all the Helium out of the HoloBalloon. We gained a lot of experiences, had some nice flights, collected good cloud data and most important everything survived. But now the measurements season is for HoloBalloon is over and it is time to analyse the data.
Strong wind but clouds
Today we were pessimistic that we have clouds to measure. But as it this are our last days were we are allowed to close the airspace, we still wanted to test how some new set-up ideas behave under strong wind.
It was a nice surprise that we actually had clouds to measure, also the winds get really strong higher up. Unfortunately our wind measurements were not working, but we estimated at least 50 km/h of wind speed. The instrument was heavily shaking and there was quite some tension on the main tether, but the winch brought everything down in one piece.
Sunrise, but no clouds
HoloBallon was in the air at six in the morning, ready to measure clouds, but the clouds were still missing. At least we got a nice video of the sunrise and are now confident that night measurements are possible.
Night session
Also it is the coldest night of the year with -15 °C, we are motivated to catch some clouds tonight. But until midnight we had a starlit night. Let have some hour of sleep in the hotel and hope for the morning.
… and out of the cloud
Into the cloud
Finally, we make it into the cloud. We could measure 10 profiles of the lower edge of the cloud. The upper edge was too high to penetrate it.
Almost clouds
Today it looked really promising. But when HoloBalloon reached its maximum altitude, we realized that the cloud layer is just a little bit higher. But we are coming nearer to the clouds.
Maximum altitude reached
Video of the first 200 m flight.