[Xastir] Balloon tracking

[William McKeehan]

Well, I used Xastir in ballon tracking yesterday. Another guy that was
tracking the balloon was using APRS+SA. I'm envious.

We lost "sight" of the ballon a couple of times (no beacons) - and the most
critical time was at the end of it's flight, we did get one packet as it was
falling @ about 4000 feet, but that was all.

The balloon did not get the lift that was planned, so the predicted landing
site was off by...several miles. This put the chase vehicles into uncharted
territory; we had to rely on maps to know the general idea of where to look
and how to get there. I had to flip back and forth between Xastir and DeLorme
Street Atlas (I have Street Atlas USA 2004, so I could not use APRS+SA with it
even if I wanted to) and had to "guess" where I was on the DeLorme map and
where the balloon was (based on the maps I had on Xastir).

The APRS+SA gave the other guy a single place to go for everything. He could
easily add map notes to indicate where other people had heard balloon packets
(he did not get the last packet @ 4000 ft that others saw), and he was able to
see his position relative to the landing site and was able to get driving
directions to the landing site.

Very nice...anyone looking at adding any similar features to Xastir?

BY THE WAY, with Xastir, I was able to get to within 1200 feet of the
balloon's final resting spot...but we could not see or hear it at that point,
so we split up and went looking. I had to leave the chase early, but am told
that they were able to find it with a phone call to a NASA engineer.

http://balloon.utarc.org

-- 
William McKeehan
KI4HDU
Internet: mckeehan at mckeehan.homeip.net
http://mckeehan.homeip.net