I want to thank everyone who participated in the ARBONET-3 mission yesterday. The mission was a huge success although we have "temporarily misplaced" the RWK payload that was not attached to the rest of the payload stack when we discovered it late yesterday afternoon near Shreveport.
[We have since found the RWK payload - Ed]
I want to extend a special thanks to the following people whose efforts insured that the mission had a successful conclusion:
Tom Trissell, KC5ILO, for preparing the facilities at the Clarksville Airport and making them available for us to use.
Bill Brown, WB8ELK (yes, all the way from Alabama) for his invaluable calculations while the payloads were in-flight that provided the recovery team with a target area to focus our search efforts on. Given that we had no altitude data from the package and we believe the last APRS data captured from the payloads came while the "vehicle" was still in the jet stream the recovery area wasn't very well defined. Without Bill's guidance, the recovery phase would have taken much longer and in fact might have been unsuccessful all together.
Ron Porter, K5AI. Ron was the first to detect the homing beacon once the package was on the ground and alerted the ARBONET chase team of his location. David, KC5UYR and Tommy, W5TCD also discovered the beacon within a few minutes of Ron's first report. This information was obviously welcomed news and lead directly to the successful recovery!
Billy Mason, KD5KNR, Mike Heskett, WB5QLD, David Forbes, KC5UYR and Tommy Davis, W5TCD for their excellent work during the chase and recovery phase. You guys are the best!
I hope everyone had as much fun yesterday as I did!
73,
Doug Loughmiller, W5BL