Teens launch weather balloon, capture footage - Rome News Tribune

Weather Balloon Science Project

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Wesley Samples and J.P. Hinson have infinitely curious minds that embarked the teenagers on quite an adventure Thursday.

The 16-year-olds, both of Rome, had an idea to launch a weather balloon that would travel from Etowah park, across the state line, and into Alabama. By attaching an iPod as well as an iPad to their weather balloon contraption, Samples and Hinson aimed to get aerial video footage of the landscape.

“This is probably the biggest project we’ve done,” said Samples.

Both Hinson and Samples have done similar projects before, such as attaching tripods with cameras to their cars, and once they even sent up an iPod attached to two balloons.

“We sent an iPod 200 feet up, but that didn’t really do it for us, so we did this,” said Samples.

Three weeks ago, Hinson and Samples decided to do “100,000 or Bust,” a weather balloon science project.

“We just had the idea to do it, we’ve seen other people do it before,” said Hinson. “We met a week ahead, built it all, spent several weeks testing it and making sure it wouldn’t come apart.”

The contraption they built was the bottom half of a foam cooler with the balloon fastened to it by duct tape and paracord. On the inside, they attached an iPhone, and on the bottom, they attached an iPad. Hinson also attached a letter to his brother who is stationed in Afghanistan, and Samples attached a letter to his 8-year-old niece who lives in North Carolina.

“We encountered a problem,” said Samples. “When it reached about 40,000 feet, that’s below freezing, basically our phones froze and they stopped recording.”

Samples and Hinson said the entire project was only supposed to take two hours, but it really took about five hours. They launched the balloon at 9:30 a.m. at Etowah Park, and it landed near Heflin, Ala., at about 3 p.m.

“We called Apple, couldn’t find (the phones), called Verizon, couldn’t find them, but finally it just showed up,” said Samples. “It was in the middle of a cow pasture, in the middle of Alabama, in the middle of nowhere,” he said, laughing.

“It probably got to be about 120,000 feet high,” said Hinson. The balloon is supposed to burst at that altitude. When it comes below 10,000 feet we’d be able to track it again.”

Hinson and Samples said they only filled the balloon with helium to 8 feet in diameter, but the balloon can expand to 24 feet.

“When it pops, it expands to 24 feet,” said Samples, “but we didn’t fill it enough. We were supposed to fill it to 14 feet, but we didn’t, so it went higher because it had more room to expand.”

They estimated that the balloon traveled a little more than 70 miles. By using a computer program that would simulate where the balloon would pop, they were able to find where it landed, but just barely. Samples said the balloon landed five miles from where the program predicted and they drove to Carrollton and waited for hours.

“It was scary when we couldn’t find it,” said Hinson.

“We were panicking. We were about to give up” added Samples, but Hinson wanted to ride around looking for it one more time when they finally found it.

“It was raining and hailing and stuff,” Samples said. “We parked on the side of the road, and hopped this guy’s fence and ran about a half a mile in the wind and hail, dodging cows and stuff.”

The whole contraption weighed two pounds and two ounces, but had the balloon weighed more than four pounds, they would have had to jump through more hoops in order to get the thumbs up from officials.

“We contacted the Air Force and they put a notice to airmen out basically from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and cleared the air space above it,” said Samples.

“You can actually hear a plane or helicopter flying by it on the iPod,” said Hinson.

Hinson and Samples plan to upload their footage to their YouTube Channel, www.youtube.com/user/AimlessTutorials, within the week.

“We’re planning to do another one at night during Christmas break,” said Hinson. “It was by far successful.”