BEAR

(Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio)

After helping with the SABLE project and watching SABLE-3 reach the unexpected altitude of 117,597 feet, James & myself can't resist trying to break the 120,522 ft altitude record and to see just how high we can get a 1200 gram balloon to go so . . . . . .

a BEAR-3 Altitude Record Attempt is planned for shortly.
 UPDATE    November 9th - 2007
Cold winter weather has arrived and, considering that we were lucky to not have a wet landing with SABLE-3 and that lakes and other water sources will soon freeze over, we now plan to play it safe and wait until after the new year and a warm winter day for our altitude record attempt.

Meanwhile, I hope to have the pages with details of the APRS tracker used for SABLE-3 and the tracker to be used for BEAR-3 completed shortly, so check back for them occasionally.

A BEAR-4 flight with one or more video camcorders is also being planned for next summer and more information about that will follow in the spring.

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

Near space, which is within the Stratosphere and Ozone layers, begins at an altitude of 75,000 feet and continues until the beginning of space at 62.5 miles. And at 100,000 feet the air pressure is 1% of the pressure at sea level, the horizon is at 389 miles, rather then 3 miles for an adult standing at sea level, and the earth's curvature and thin blue layer of atmosphere hugging the earth can easily be seen. With no atmosphere there is no filtering of cosmic rays or ultraviolet light, blue sun light is no longer scattered so the sky is left inky black, stars are visible and with no weather it's always bright and sunny, but very cold at -60 to -90 degrees Fahrenheit.

A proper APRS tracker is essential to be able to track and recovery payloads and our first flight, BEAR-1, was to confirm that the GPS receiver chosen for our APRS tracker wasn't limited to use below 65,000 feet, as most are. For BEAR-2 a cross band repeater was included and future payloads are planned with cameras.

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October 28 / 2004 - Several have asked if the BEAR group is still active as there has been no activity recently. The answer is that the group, basically myself and several friends, is still alive and planning to have more flights, but have simply been busy with other projects. As for when future flights may happen depends upon when I find time to design and build their payloads as I'm the technical one in the group and the payloads are my creations.

I have been busy with ATV projects and learning how to write PIC software since the flight of BEAR-2 and, since ATV will be a big part of future flights and a number of PIC controllers will be required, I guess one could say I am working on, or at least working towards, future flights now. And the long wait for the next flight brings many good things with it, like it is making it ever easier to do what we want to do. For BEAR-2 we wanted to include a digital camera for a photo from the edge of space, but a digital camera was too expensive to risk using in 2000, image quality was poor, few owned one and no one had an older retired one to use. But costs have dropped significantly since then and we now have many inexpensive, high resolution digital cameras, even camcorders, to select from.

The bottom line is that future BEAR flights are still a go.