Dropping a glider from 10km with a high-altitude weather balloon

[@BrightBlueJim]

Something to consider if you do this again at higher altitude: hand warmers work by oxidizing iron powder that's exposed to air. It's going to stop working at some altitude where there isn't a lot of air, and where you really need the extra heat.

[@RaptorTech]

This was a consideration. I bought some high-power resistors to use as warmers for a higher altitude, but we decided that handwarmers would do for 10km

[@joshmyer9]

I assume you have temperature logging, so you can actually tell. In all our near-space balloon flights, we never had issues with it, but we were also dropping tortilla warmers (little cylindrical coolers), which spend less time in the upper/cold troposphere. But once you're way up there, you're kinda sorta in a giant mediocre thermos anyway. (We also dropped a taco-size tortilla warmer payload from 75k' or so without a chute once, after lots and lots of testing to prove that its terminal velocity near the ground was surprisingly low, since it's got lots of surface area. Didn't even leave a dent in the farmer's dirt we found it in.)

[@leonardr6704]

You could use chemical hand warmers that have an contained exothermic reaction. Or they can just be sealed so the warmers are in an airtight container.

[@llVIU]

the fact that regular folks can use home made items to get something that can go 10 km high is mind boggling. Imagine people 100 years ago how they would feel

[@legui83]

CONGRATULATIONS!!!! Awesome project and perfectly made!!!

[@vilcoyote6638]

Brilliant !!! personally, I would have used a trained mouse to disconnect the glider from ballon....

[@sagealling40]

this deserves more views! super cool project!

[@luqmanrashid1651]

if you plan to go higher, you can use servos or solenoids to disengage from the balloon.

[@PaulinKantue]

I had to stop the video just to say AWESOMELY DONE! :)

[@MichaelKGizzonimo]

Nice build! Beautiful flight.

[@UDoIt2]

holy siht!!!! THAT WAS AMAZING! Great project guys!

[@Impact_driver]

im so glad you actually put an autopilot system onto it

[@ThanapongPhanthong]

Your project is very interesting for me, please explain the system (e.g. codes, or wiring) between a pixhawk flight controller and a GPS/GSM tracker. Thank you in advance.

[@joconnor5241]

Don't let the FAA see this

[@Bv3017rocket]

Can you send me the plans for the glider and all the parts used please? I've got to try this on the west coast...😃👍

[@jdvidsofficial]

Hi, Just wondering if I am able to contact to get some information about this project? Kind Regards Jordan

[@johnmpowell]

Great flight. I love all the details! I do balloons and a "fly back" option would sure cut down on recovery operations!

[@RichLewis007]

Hi, I was wondering if you would please tell us what version of the ArduPilot (ArduPlane?) and Dronekit software you used? Also, what parameters did you change in your Pixhawk? For example, many people who use the Pixhawk to guide unpowered gliders change settings so the Pixhawk doesn't think there is a motor to propel the plane. ( See: diydrones.com/forum/topics/non-powered-glider ) Thank you for any help you can give in this area! Great work!

[@KennethNicholasK9]

Thanks

[@FijiWater1227]

Keep up the great work guys!

[@dayweather]

Do you have a link to the plans you used to build the glider? Great job! Thx

[@marckerger]

would be cool to try to reach back to launch site. but that would probably be against the wind, since the balloon drifted the other way.

[@cooter3690]

Did you use any type of video transmitter? Also, what type of range does those pixhawk antennas get? How high could you have gone theoretically without losing signal?

[@jeffburns2179]

Go further inland and launch at 80,000 ft...or the max altitude the balloon can reach. Also, it would be cool to make a system that lets go of the glider the instant the balloon explodes, so it reaches the highest altitude the balloon can possibly go.

[@itanlopezarce6063]

This is a good proyect, i really like your plane, have you programmed the Pixhawk PX4 for being a glider without motor?, or how did you set up?

[@intrepidrocket]

Looks like it's been awhile since a post on this. Nice project and remarkable video. I'm currently working on two lifting bodies, the HL-10 and Dream Chaser models. Both about 12" long, using a booster rocket with an aeroshell to for the up part. I'm interested in control systems to stabilize the craft and guide it back.

[@lakeguy65616]

How do you avoid commercial and private aviation traffic? Do you just let it go and hope for the best? What happens to the balloon? It continues to rise until it bursts. Is it biodegradable?

[@stevusbeavus720]

I wish you still made cool content like this

[@AnimalFacts]

What an awesome project!

[@topsecret1837]

I was impressed by all the numbers in this project. I was more than surprised this is in CT too! I was imagining that the actual distance of the flight was about twice the north-south distance of Connecticut, but when I saw the tip of Long Island sound that made this a bit literal for me. Could you use technology like this to make some sort of toy cruise missile? Like a NERF missile that can be launched and recovered? I don’t mean fly it into someone’s house but use a pool noodle, make wings for it, make a 3D printed motor and propeller, and have the raspberry Pi Zero nearer to the front to make a nerf missile that flies for miles, lol

[@jw0stephens]

To be clear, you had it set up to navigate to the location you selected for landing? That is pretty cool. Would love to see it done without the weather and ice.

[@RaptorTech]

Exactly! It was flying to a pre-programmed GPS coordinate

[@jw0stephens]

I love that the device is in controlled flight rather than dizzying spinning that many of the return to Earth to near space are. Curious did you need to obtain an FAA clearance or is their such for this? No point now unless you plan further flights, but a drone N registration would be cool to have for these flights. The terminal part of the flight is impressive as it home in on and circles the terminal area to land.

[@Orthon]

Great job. Congratulations

[@LeviMaston]

Fantastic! I like your solution for carrying payload consisting of a flight controlled autonomous vehicle. Ive thought about using a fixed wing aircraft, like a foam plane, to deliver a payload of a miniquad, and thinking about how, when to arm and calibrate the FC and gyros has stumped me. I like your solution.

[@KennethNicholasK9]

This is awesome you used a raspberry pi zero and flight controller can you please send the schematics so I can replicate?

[@Tiberius-84]

That was pretty badass. Good job.

[@donnyb6888]

i youtube searched for this and was not disappointed!! so rad

[@ohitstarik]

Yooo this is sick! Its so surprising that the airplane actually lived through 200 mph, thats crazy. The pixhawk is an amazing platform for sure, i didnt even know that they supported gliders. Are you guys in the U.S.? I'm working on a similar project (check my channel if need be) so i'm really wondering, how'd you get through regulations? I'm planning on running through a whole safety checklist with radar reflectors or whatever but i'm just wondering if you guys had to run through FAA or not since it's still a gray ish area. Well done though! Really happy for you guys.

[@davidholmes9668]

What was the "music" for?

[@strategicthinker8899]

I picked up an idea about cameras. Now, 10 km is not space, not even close. Space begins at around 80 km where the atmosphere is thin enough so satellites don't experience significant drag and fall to earth.

[@kingdongo4388]

Now that’s awesome

[@nickst2797]

NIce! What is the distance travelled by the glider when in descend? I refer to the pink "line" in your gps log. If you use the ruler tool from beginning of the "line" until the further point of it, what is the distance?

[@thusharanireesh6825]

How did you make the program

[@MarkHivosk]

Love it! I am doing a similar project and sending my drone about the same height, however far I can make my DJI mini 2 SE transmit from. It can't go above around 2000meters on its own so I'm going to use some foil party balloons. If you want to share advice or collab let me know

[@juanmanumanudice8848]

Clouds above and under that was a cool shoot👍

[@travelersworldcafellc7036]

Can you fly a package half way around the world with this? Can you drop it out of sub orbit and land the glider on another continent? I see a way to use space and balloons to send packages like a long distance amazon drone... Is it possible?>

[@KonradZaprucki]

Congratulations! How about law? Glider like this is qualifying as a drone or falling stratosphere probe? In 2 months I'm sending mine glider and have no idea how to make it legal :) Greethings from Poland! :)

[@RaptorTech]

The law is very much a grey area. If you consider this to be dropping a payload from a high altitude balloon, this is legal. If you consider this to be flying a UAS beyond VLOS and above 400 feet, less so. Since we were literally releasing this from a balloon and don't have any way of piloting it, we were erring on the side that this was just a typical HAB launch.

[@rocketry100]

Surely Balloon payloads parachute to the ground? This is a model aircraft launched from a balloon (If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck ......). It even uses a model aircraft autopilot, servos battery etc. It presents the same risks to other aircraft that a RTH glider would present.

[@RaptorTech]

From my reading, there's no regulation concerning parachutes. There are limitations on weight and density, which this glider meets. Regarding risk to other aircraft, I'm not sure this would be any more dangerous than a typical balloon payload. It's certainly smaller than a chute would be for this weight, and its made mostly of foam just like typical "lunchbox" payloads. It descends at about the same rate as well. Regarding safety of people on the ground, this is definitely a lot safer, because we can program exactly where it will land.

[@rocketry100]

Thanks - surprisingly your right - I can't find any mention of needing a parachute in the US regulation (or ICAO docs). I'm in the UK where there is a pretty clear statement about descending by parachute in the HAB permit. However I know some of the US HAB guys have been in contact with the FAA about controlled descent in the past and have had a statement from them ("100% forbidden" they say) - see the current discussion on Steering your parachute on the UKHAS google group. We can argue about whether its more dangerous than a typical polystyrene box HAB payload - its certainly a lot faster horizontally and the closing speed with another aircraft will be a lot faster than a HAB box on parachute. Its certainly the same risk as a similar sized RC aircraft - which arn't allowed to be flown out of visual range (UK and US).

[@chesternelson7108]

@@RaptorTech For anyone else considering doing this in the U.S.-----There are also rules about dropping anything from a balloon without a parachute. This does qualify as a "UAS" operating in the National Airspace, guided or not, and this means you must have specific authorization from FAA and be flying in approved airspace, regardless of your suppositions on this being no different from a "lunchbox" payload. A group of University students I teach in the Northwest U.S. attempted a similar project a few years back and found we needed permissions from FAA, Homeland Security, and potentially EPA before such a drop. After months of correspondence with two different FAA offices we had to cancel the project. I believe University of Colorado had such a project several years earlier with a somewhat larger autonomous model and in the end were only allowed to drop with a parachute attached to the model. Some groups have been able to get permissions for less grand drops at lower altitudes, but only over FAA approved "Spaceports" and possibly with real-time onboard position reporting via aircraft transponder.

[@ThanapongPhanthong]

Hi guy, can I use Raspberry Pi 3 model B, instead of Raspberry Pi Zero ?

[@williambirdwell8792]

Very cool. Great job. Keep up the fantastic work

[@redcurated4302]

You guys have a fire channel

[@thomastrainsmore2010]

Why this song

[@julianchee2894]

How did you arm the glider while its in flight ?

[@luqmanprasetyo9698]

Hi bro, i just wanna make sure about how make a flight path on the maps as you created above. Is that you use some apecific of API Gmaps or not?

[@itanlopezarce6063]

Hi, amazing work, really, im doing something like this, we have an unpowered glider and we have to drop it from a bigger powered aircraft, i bought some pixhawks to control the gliders, however we can't make it works well, we tried to modify a lot of parameters in Mission Planner but we don't know how to set the landing coordinates, we tried to set a mission just with 1 Waypoint (the landing waypoint), we drop it with a Mavic Pro at 60m of altitude and we switch to "Auto Mode" and it doesnt look to work well, i really hope that you can help us setting the parameters well, we have red a lot of forums and documents, thanks.

[@iforce2d]

How about a DO_SET_HOME command and then just use RTL mode? ardupilot.org/planner/docs/common-mavlink-mission-command-messages-mav_cmd.html#mav-cmd-do-set-home

[@bradydyer]

This is seriously the coolest thing ever!!

[@MDimosN]

Super guys, nice edit👍

[@AZAce1064]

How did you control it from that distance?

[@DreamForged3D]

Dude this was so cool I had to subscribe!😁👍

[@WeatherWorld]

Awesome video, I admire this project highly! :) Just a quick question, did you have to keep in contact with ATC or anyone from the FAA while it was flying, or before it flew?

[@RaptorTech]

Weather World I called a local ATC and checked my launch window, but that’s not strictly necessary launchwithus.com/lwu-blog/2016/01/21/high-altitude-weather-balloon-laws-and-regulations

[@qjy7721]

Sick job m8! Hi can I ask, what is your vtx and vrx and RC setup for this mission? :)

[@RaptorTech]

q jy No vtx, no vrx, and no RC. The plane was fully autonomous! The only information we were getting from the glider was texts from a cheap GPS/GSM tracker we bought on amazon

[@wingrovedl]

Great job guys !

[@kareemsalessi]

MAGNIFICENT::: Q:: Did your glider take the air-temperature during climb??? If so, what was the coldest, at what altitude??? thanks. K.S.

[@ohitstarik]

Did you guys use ROS to talk to Pixhawk or did you just start the mission and sent the pixhawk up? Great job by the way.

[@juanpablocheva16]

amazing guys! How did you do so that the low temperature does not affect the electronics on board?

[@RaptorTech]

We stuffed the vehicle full of handwarmers!

[@edvardbertrand5512]

This was pretty dope. Did you need any permissions from local/state government to do this? I would imagine not everyone can send just send a glider up into the atmosphere with a huge balloon and recording cameras without permission.

[@yeehark]

Hi, this was a really good video. I really enjoyed it. I am currently working on a project similar to this. However a problem we face is that the arduino board we are using is not providing sufficient power to heat up the nichorme wire. How did you go about this?

[@RaptorTech]

Yeah there's no way you'll get enough current from GPIO on any board. You'll need to use the arduino to trigger a relay or a big mosfet. We used a solid state relay for this project

[@gardentools2553]

Things gonna survivor high speed free fall???? I would think a carbon fiber design capable of dynamic soaring would be an order Like the ones who who can we stand 540 mph...

[@Maps32]

would like to do this as a hobby one day, thanks for the inspiration

[@marcustheodocius182]

I would LOVE to learn how to do this!

[@coleharlow6434]

@RaptorTech I am hoping to do a similar project, can you tell me if this project was launched in the United States and if so what laws/regulations you had to follow.

[@benmarson9441]

I believe launching anything that high you'll need authorisation from the FAA, CAA or whoever your aviation authority is

[@danieliustarmasevicius8889]

what is wingspan of this UAV ?

[@techie2371]

That is so cool!

[@JoseMartinez-ue9xq]

Does anyone know the grup and title of the 2nd song of this video?

[@punkinhaidmartin]

You need to think about launching a big balloon to 65,000 feet and the dropping a fast glider fromm 100,000 feet to pop the lower one.

[@jackhydrazine1376]

Next time you should take it up to 100,000 feet and fly it back!

[@RaptorTech]

That was our original plan! (hence the massive battery). Unfortunately the upper-atmosphere winds didn't really make that possible in the winter, but it seems like things are a bit calmer in the summer...

[@Vl4diii]

Good job guys 👍

[@MCsCreations]

Nice! 😊

[@SmiKProduction]

Absolutely love this! Can you make a beginner tutorial for doing this project?

[@Nothinglefttosay]

Step one: get a balloon

[@stevebano5874]

*....I'M NOT IN "FLAT CLUB" BUT NOW I'M SCEPTICAL....*

[@tonimorton]

think of the military applications of this... because im sure they are..

[@rickbrasche8781]

next step, put a rocket motor on it, and boost it from the balloon for even more altitude!

[@RaptorTech]

Google rockoon!

[@icaruscomplex5588]

nicely done

[@JoseMartinez-ue9xq]

¿Alguien conoce el grupo y el titulo de la 2ª cancion instrumental del video?

[@fredrikhamar4374]

impressive build, however: WHY oh WHY did you use a fish eye lens on the camera? and WHY oh WHY did you position the camera so that half the shot is obstructed by the wing!

[@vitale6633]

Awesome...

[@Thealiengamer1]

Nice vid, but i'm pretty sure that 10km ain't close to the edge of space

[@georgefranklin3222]

Good video but the music did not at to the viewing experience for me.

[@unixoid33]

10km can reach to electro draft

[@adnanabdillahghifari720]

That's over 343.78 Km/h Maximum peed

[@gilbondfac]

bravo les gars ! félicitations

[@NaturalJuhTPF]

vraiment génial a part l’œil de poisson ^^ du travaille de pro . paix et amour

[@Newopics18581]

If you do this a 15k the plane will burn

[@aqmorisny]

Great Job it can be used militarily.

[@dexterestacion5323]

1:11 4:53

[@lucywucyyy]

10km isnt even close to space

[@jdaze1]

Too bad you used a fish eye lens.

[@RaptorTech]

Yeah, most small cameras are fisheye. We could easily undistort it, but most RC guys are pretty used to seeing fisheye for aerial video

[@billyzig]

I would love to see it without a fish eye lens. I reckon you would get a large amount of people wanting to see it. Great project BTW.

[@chadman2275]

To bad they sent a RC plane to dam space literally who gives a single darn thing about what camera they used yeesh bravo good work awesome!!

[@joshwallace207]

Flat earther spotted...

[@drameday]

Awful music. But cool project.

[@hb9hal]

😍😍😍😎

[@joaopaulo1gb]

Omg,