Recap of EOSS-140/141

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EOSS 140/141

by Mike Pappas, W9CN

We rendezvoused with the EOSS-140/141 Tracking and Recovery (T&R) teams at the McDonalds at the intersection of Airport road and I-70 at 5 AM. I had been up until midnight the night before getting the car packed with gear, radios programmed and my new Yaesu VX8 running with APRS. The alarm went off at 3:45 AM so it was a very short night. I got Miles (AKA the heir apparent) out of bed and the dog walked and we hit the road at 4:30 AM.

I was �volunteered� by Jim Langsted, KC0RPS, to perform the launch safety check list once at the launch site. Other than a last minute student payload glitch with a camera's batteries that had gone bad and which were repaired (see pictures), EOSS-140 was launched without a hitch. The wind had picked up quite a bit and the fill and launch of EOSS-141 was a little more difficult but it also got off without any problem.

The ATV payload went In-Op shortly after launch with very low RF level making the downlink marginal for KB0YRZ (who has freshly minted General class ticket holder by the way: Congratulations Chris!). W5VSI tracked this problem back to a broken lead on the antenna coax once the payload was recovered.

This was the first time I was tasked as being the �guide� for the EOSS-141 student team and my goal was to try to get them into the field in time to see the landing.. Of course the best laid plans didn�t quite work out that way...

After the launch we headed up Price road to Hwy 36 which we took east. Larry Cerney, K0ANI, was leading the students from the EOSS-140 flight and during the run east we had several chats on EOSS-140's simplex frequency about which highway to run north on. We finally chose Hwy 63 at the �city� of Anton. We ran north a couple of miles and pulled over to the side of the road. Luck was with us as we were right under both EOSS-140 and EOSS-141 and the sharp eyes of the students were able to spot both of them at 80,000 plus foot altitude! �ANI and I needed more help in spotting them, something about older eyes.

Both the EOSS-140 and EOSS-141 balloons burst over the students heads and we saddled them all up and headed out to recover them. Communications were quite spotty from the T&R team but via relay from Nick Hanks, N0LP, we were able to discern that County Road 30 was going to be a challenge. �ANI and I discussed this and came to the conclusion that it had been a couple of hours since that road report and that the road must have dried out by now and it couldn�t possibly be that bad.. Wrong!

So, we headed up Hwy 63 to County Road 30. CR 30 hadn�t dried out in the least and it was a terrific mess of viscous brown mud with very little traction and really big ruts. I was running 20 MPH and the traction control and stability control systems in my Cadillac were lighting up like a Madame LaRue pinball machine on tilt as the car was being pulled sideway in this gelatinous mix on the road surface while it was moving forward. I watched in amusement as the lead student Suburban behind me was slewing sideways at 30 degrees with fountains of mud jetting up from all its tires.

We slowed down to 15 MPH and the students switched all of their rented Suburban�s to 4 WD low and that helped to keep them pointed mostly in the right direction at speeds less than 20 MPH.

I figured that Al Cooley was looking down at us from heaven and smiling as all of the vehicles were absolutely covered in a brown gooey mud. During our low speed drive east on County Road 30 we ran into Glenn Hetchler, WB4DKT, and the Big White Bus (which was now brown). They were on their way to recover the EOSS-141 payload. We handed off the EOSS-141 students to Glenn and we watched as they slewed their way up a hill to that balloon's landing area.

We continued on with the EOSS-140 students to the recovery area for that balloon which was several more miles down a very treacherous CR 30 to County Road XX. We turned south on CR XX and it stopped about a 1/2 mile and turned into a path. We followed Rob Wright, KC0UUO, down the path until we got to a gate leading into the landowners property. I put the EOSS-140 students into the capable hands of UUO at this point and let him along with Benjie Campbell, W0CBH, and Larry Noble, N0NDM, guide them to the EOSS-140 recovery site as I had already put my Cadillac DTS through plenty. I slowly headed back out of XX to CR30 and waited for the EOSS-140 recovery.

I worked Mike Morgan, N0MPM, on 20 meters along with W0CBH while the students were recovering the EOSS-140 payloads.

The use of split simplex frequencies for the recovery of the EOSS-140 and EOSS-141 payloads worked well. It took some getting used to for all of the T&R teams and Alpha but having two frequencies made this very challenging recovery much easier. After both payloads were recovered we headed east on CR 30 which hadn�t improved much to CR 61 north to the �sprawling metropolis� (a wide spot in the road) of Otis and took Hwy 34 west to lunch into the town of Brush. We picked a nice Mexican restaurant complete with spray painted gang symbols in the men's restroom and no toilet seat on the toilet! The food was good however and much discussion was had about the flights.

I drove back to Denver and hit a DYI high pressure spray car wash near my house in a rash attempt to try to remove the massive amounts of mucilaginous mud that had adhered itself to every nook and cranny on my car.

$16 later I had deposited most of it on the car wash floor. I was now able to at least see the lower half of the car body and headed home. Of course Al had the last laugh as it hailed and rained on my freshly washed car about 20 minutes later...