This week, I designed, constructed, and launched a moored weather balloon. I scavenged necessary parts and 3D-printed the gondola, and conducted the flight test at Schenley Park after filing a NOTAM and in accordance with Part 101. The balloon flew successfully, though unfortunately there were issues with power delivery onboard and the Raspberry Pi continued to reboot. More problematic was the weather – though the forecast had forecasted <10% cloud cover, the cloud cover above the test site was above 50%. Useful data was collected, and results demonstrated that feature extraction breaks in the presence of clouds. The balloon ascended to a maximum of 500FT AGL and 1km away. I am working to address this by blurring and thresholding the image to mask out clouds. I will re-evaluate results after this is completed.
