Almost-live video coverage of Occupy Boston protest (inspired by Occupy Wall Street) on October 5, 2011 (1:51 pm), as protesters blocked the street, police arrived with tie-strap handcuffs, and protesters shouted chants then left the street to return to the lawn they have been occupying.

I saw this on the street as I was walking by, while visiting Boston. I do not necessarily agree with their messages or their mode of protest–I’m just reporting what I saw.

This post is an actual account of a two-day adventure to track, locate, and recover K2CC’s space capsule from its first ever near-space weather balloon experiment. Day 1 (referred to as “yesterday”) is Thursday, May 5, 2011 and Day 2 (referred to as “today”) is Friday, May 6, 2011. The launch site was at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY USA.

As I wipe Southwest Chipotle Sauce from my hands and face, I notice the strange feeling of a full stomach that has not yet fully recovered from the mild airplane sickness from just an hour before. The search and rescue flight was long, fatiguing, and fruitless until just past the point of wanting to give up. The sound of the radio beacon was so faintly trying to get our attention at first that we almost missed it when our yawns out-cried its transmissions.

To have been able to plan a search path to fly and even hear the radio beacon is quite incredible; however, to have made a visual confirmation of the space capsule’s landing place in the Adirondacks is next to impossible! Waypoint logged, here we are on our way to hopefully recover our aerial photography from our near-space weather balloon. Best yet, it’s late evening, leaving us with little remaining daylight, we have to hike through thick, swampy Boreal forest, and I’m covered with Southwest Chipotle Sauce. I hope there are no bears this far North that have ever vacationed in the Southwest to then say, “Is that Southwest Chipotle Sauce? My, I haven’t sunk my canines into a juicy Southwest Chipotle-style human since that rodeo years back!”

Just yesterday, we launched the balloon and payload around 4pm with great success. At the last minute, I remembered that I happened to have an audible emergency siren in my vehicle, so I grabbed that, clipped it on the space capsule, and we enabled it upon launch. We released it from a lawn on campus and watched it ascend toward the clouds, and then hopped in our vehicles equipped with tracking and recovery gear. Our tracking and recovery gear consisted of VHF radios for receiving the position transmissions, computers and software for decoding the position data, specialized mapping software for comparing multiple waypoints, GPS receivers, UHF radios for mission voice communications, GSM and CDMA cellular telephones for receiving APRS network data from aprs.fi (in the very few spots that cellular coverage was possible), UHF radios for receiving the separate radio beacon transmissions, directional antennae for determining the relative bearing of the radio beacon, and standard hiking gear. While in our vehicles, we tracked a balloon flight path to the South, which then turned and completed a large circle.

Due to GPS location transmissions being interrupted prematurely, we were unable to determine the landing site, which necessitated the use of balloon trajectory prediction software. We drove on some very rough, and scary, logging roads near the predicted possible landing area. We even had to cross some interesting wooden bridges! Unfortunately, we were unable to receive either GPS location transmissions or the separate beacon’s transmissions, which led to our eventual small plane flight today.

In this second evening attempt, we arrive 0.7 miles from the spotted landing site on a major State highway at 8pm. Three of us begin our hike with hiking gear, a UHF radio, and a directional antenna. We hike through thick forest with an unusual, swampy, moss-covered floor. After a while of pushing our way through the forest, we come to a stream.

While in the air, we noticed this stream that would be in our way, as well as a beaver dam stretched across it. After locating it, we then cross the stream by walking 100 feet along the top of the beaver dam until safely on the other side, which also necessitated throwing down logs from the dam to repair a 10-foot gap in the center of the dam. We then continue pushing our way through the forest toward the source of the UHF beacon transmissions, and inquire about a strange-sounding bird we occasionally hear chirp.

Eventually, we arrive at the general vicinity of the landing site, but are so close to the source of the radio beacon transmissions that we no longer can determine a direction. At this point, we are searching every tree for a shiny, metallic space capsule dangling by a string. Just then, we hear that same unusual chirp, and realize it is too acrylic-sounding to belong in the forest. The occasional chirp is not from a bird, but from the battery-exhausted audible beacon we had clipped on the space capsule as an afterthought! We turn and look with our flashlights to see our space capsule dangling from an evergreen tree. I suggest we fell the tree, but the capsule is only about 8 feet off the ground, so we decide to simply pull it down instead.

With coyotes packing up behind us, we trek back to the beaver dam, cross the pond using the dam again, and press through the pitch-black forest back to the vehicle. After an intense hike through the dark, we arrive back at the road where the vehicle is parked. We arrive in Potsdam at 10:15pm with space capsule, parachute, and balloon remnants in hand, and recover the memory cards from the horizontal and vertical digital cameras with incredible timelapse photography on board!

Other notable photos from K2CC’s weather balloon and space capsule, as well as from the recovery missions: https://picasaweb.google.com/tycon1337/TheGreatGigInTheSky

APRS Position Telemetry Messages: balloon_aprs_dot_fi_messages

Tyler Conlon’s website: http://tylerconlon.com
K2CC’s website: http://k2cc.clarkson.edu

It had been so long since the last time and my memory was starting to fail me. How did I make it so long without being reminded of the destruction that occurred on this occasion before? Was I really that creative in assembling outfits that I could avoid it this long, or that uncivilized? Wasn’t the night of the last time unseasonably warm as well, foreboding the unexpected terror of that night? “No time to revisit that,” I thought, “since I need to hurry and make preparations!” This time, I didn’t want to lose loved ones or have families of socks divided at the wrath of the Laundry–nor did I want wrinkles scarring my clothing from the horrors of the Laundry Day the week before.

“I’ll return shortly, guys. Please stick together this time. Remember, the safest way to get through this with no mistakes is to use the Buddy System, wash the colors and whites together using detergent only (so we don’t accidentally bleach the colors), and to wait for me right here. I’ll be back in thirty-eight minutes exactly to transfer you to the dryer, and then another sixty minutes after that to quickly fold you and get you back to safety. Ready? TEAM!” I knew I had covered all that could be expected, and I proceeded to find something to eat; however, in the depths of my being I sensed that, should the unexpected occur again as it did on that very similar night of yore, all the preparations of the world could not resist the inevitable.

Everything went smoothly during the transitional stages of Checkpoint A. I drove across town to take care of some final preparations before returning to fold and retrieve my flock. At one point, on my way back to the Laundry, I needed to hop out of my faithful Jeep for a quick second. I left it running so its continued warmth could combat the now slightly-frigid, damp air (I did not bother to place my jacket upon my back for such a quick encounter with the elements). The air had changed–and so had my luck.

I returned to my vehicle, only to find that the door had somehow become locked. Was it someone out of the night? Had that manipulative lock bud tickled out of my funny bone an unfortunate nudge? “I just need to stay calm,” I thought. “After all, I always carry a spare key! This is no problem at all!” I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I reached into my pocket only to find that the holy, beat-up old pair of jeans I had put on just for the occasion had failed me. The pocket that previously provided a safe haven for my spare key had become the instrument for its doom. Indeed, this pair of Laundry Day jeans had acquired an additional hole–right in the pocket! I cried out, “No! How could you do this to me, my old friend?”

My pants replied, “I have only betrayed you as you had betrayed me, leaving me with the others you hardly wear anymore.”

My heart and mind quickly returned to my beloved facing the Laundry. I exclaimed, “Beware of the lint trap! It’s a trap!” What if I did not get back in time to save them from the wrinkles of agony? The mildew of despair? It surely was too far to walk, and with my jacket locked inside my over-heating Jeep, I would freeze to death if I tried. Oh, the terrible irony!

I had but minutes to safely retrieve my flock before their suffering commenced. I was trapped on the opposite side of town from the Laundry, and the opposite side of town from an evening meeting, and the only thing separating me from freedom was a thin pane of glass. Just then, just enough light descended from Heaven to illuminate the resting place of my spare key. I swooped it up, hopped in my Jeep, and raced against the clock, making it just in the nick of time. After folding, I gleefully galloped to Downtown for fellowship with my friends.

Accustomed to crazy adventures like these only while visiting big cities, I never before would have guessed the potential for one right here in my own back yard! And this, my friends, is a perfect example of my trademark way for a man to testify that he is, in fact, really called for marriage after all–in normal, day-to-day activities (like doing the laundry) he finds he simply cannot function without a helper to correct him, regardless of his level of sense or intelligence! (That is, of course, after God has revealed marriage for the man to be a part of His Purpose.)

Start: Maple Street, Potsdam, NY 0310 hours
Destination: Mount Arab, near Piercefield, NY at 44.203889, -74.584444 (near fire/ranger tower)
Return: Maple Street, Potsdam, NY before 1000 hours

Roster: Rajiv N., Omkar D., Krunal B., Wenjin H., Erin K., Pat W. (me)
Equipment: Water canteens, flash lights, fire starters, VX-7R ham radio

Phone tracking: iPhone, GPS Tracker (dependent upon cellular coverage)
Radio tracking: OpenTracker+ SMT, Yaesu VX-7R HT (experimental, alpha test)

Driving Map:

Last week I had the exciting opportunity to fly out to Wichita, Kansas for three nights. The first thing I noticed while getting off the plane was how flat the terrain was all around me, with not a single hill anywhere in sight, and, of course, how windy it was as a result. The hotel I stayed at was fairly nice, with approximately eleven floors, three dining areas, and a number of interesting guest services. My room was also nice and very comfortable.

On my first night, I dined in one of the hotel eateries where I ate a delicious rib eye steak, my favorite cut of meat. The steak was perfectly prepared naked, medium-rare, and thick-cut (over one inch thick). Cut from Midwestern Aberdeen Angus (Black Angus), fresh and never frozen, it was the best rib eye I have ever eaten. In addition to being freshly cut, its succulent tastiness was helped by the fact that Midwestern cattle consume different minerals as they graze than Northeastern cattle do, which produces a flavor that some people prefer. Kansas definitely knows its beef.

On my second night I went out for fantastic barbecue with those that I was meeting in Wichita. We went to Two Brothers Barbecue, where I ordered a combination dinner that included shredded loin, Kansas City-style burnt tips, and pulled pork. It was a great taste of the best of barbecue from three different regions–Southern, Midwestern, and Northeastern styles, respectively. The meat was delicately smoked very well, and several different barbecue sauce condiments were available.

On my final night, I ate in the hotel’s sports bar eatery where I had a strip steak. It was also cut from Midwestern Aberdeen Angus and was very flavorful and tender, and fairly juicy, the way strip steak should be, and much unlike the average strip steak in the Northeast nowadays. Apparently, strip steaks used to be much better in our region back in the old days, but for some reason or another tend to be dryer and less appetizing these days.

My flights all ran very smoothly, and getting through security at the airports was so easy I cannot imagine why people are always complaining about it. It seemed that there were plenty of checkpoint aisles and personnel  to handle all the travelers in a timely manner, but maybe that is a more recent achievement at airports than it was in the past. One thing to note is that there are two airports in Chicago, and one is a lot nicer to have a long layover in than the other (one has sit-down restaurants, small shops, and entertainment opportunities, while the other has only small shops, McDonald’s, and a bar). I was offered a free round-trip flight if I volunteered to take a later flight and give up my seat on my way back, but because my ride had already left to meet me at the airport, I decided I couldn’t take it. Maybe next time.