BEAR

(Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio)

A view from near space and SABLE-3 at 117,597 feet, August 11, 2007

Near space is within the Stratosphere and Ozone layers, from 75,000 feet to the beginning of space at 62.5 miles. The earth's curvature and thin blue layer of atmosphere hugging the earth can easily be seen from here and at 117,000 ft. the horizon is at 460 miles, rather then only 2-3 miles when standing at ground level, and the air pressure is less then 1% of that at sea level. With so little atmosphere there is no filtering of cosmic rays or ultraviolet light, blue sun light is not scattered, the sky is inky black, stars are visible and there's no weather, so always bright and sunny, but very cold at -60 to -90 degrees Fahrenheit.

A small group of us in the Sherwood Park / Edmonton area decided to start launching high altitude balloons with experimental amateur radio payloads and nickname them BEAR (Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio) after watching others do this and seeing no reason why they should have all the fun. We are not a club or official group, but simply individual amateurs with similar interests, common goal and hope that BEAR projects, which anyone is welcome to participate in, will help promote education, experimentation & camaraderie between all amateurs and amateur radio clubs in the area.

An APRS tracker is essential to track and recover balloon payloads and our first flight, BEAR-1, was to confirm that the GPS receiver chosen for our tracker would work above the 60,000 ft ITAR altitude limit. BEAR-2 included a cross band repeater and cameras and other equipment are planned for BEAR-3 and future flights.

However our plans for BEAR-3 quickly changed after helping with the SABLE project, watching SABLE-3 reach the unexpected altitude of 117,597 ft., learning this was the 6th highest altitude on record and that the record was only another 2925 ft. (120,522 ft. at the time) as we can't resist trying to set a new record and see just how high a 1200 gram balloon can be made to go.

May 2009 - Some have asked if the BEAR group is still active and yes it is. It's been 9 years since BEAR-2, but, although there's a small group involved that helps launch, track and recover payloads, I'm the only one working on future payloads so progress is slow, especially with many other projects and things I'm involved with. However proceeding so slowly has it's benefits and, while digital cameras were new and too expensive to risk for BEAR-2, now there are all kinds of inexpensive digital cameras capable of high quality images to use and even Hi-Def video cameras.

BEAR is now on Twitter
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