Oh hey, flew gopro hero 3s on HABs back in the day. They didn't overheat, they "ran out of battery". They pull harder on cold batteries and thus the voltage was lower and it thought it was out of battery. It warms up and magically has battery again! Encasing them in the plastic waterporrf case helped, as did hand warmers.
Lithium Ion batteries are well known to be temp sensitive. The reaction slows down at lower temperature and they will appear to have a much lower capacity. This is why for a lot of amateur high altitude launches they use lithium primary cells, they have a much lower operating temperature and are used for a lot of extreme environment applications.
As a survival instructor (and a CFI, for that matter), I'm glad that you (a) found your payload and (b) made it back out safely. That said: What. Were. You. Thinking? I imagine you had time pressure for return airline flights, etc., but you took big risks (that could easily have escalated into a SAR situation, thus risking others) when it would have made far more sense to start out on the retrieve expedition equipped to bivouac (or even camp in relative comfort) at nightfall, then complete the retrieve the next day. And I speculate it wouldn't have taken much longer, considering how much faster you'd have been able to route-find and move over the terrain in daylight. Also--since you always seem to have plenty of friends with vehicles to bring stuff out to the Playa, why don't you come up in your Cessna? That way you'd have it to scout the retrieve before heading out into the boonies. Stay safe and keep having fun and sharing it with us!
As not a survival instructor (but an average hiker)... yeah. The weather can change fast in the mountains and weather forecasts that far from populations centers are more of a gesture. I've seen things like hail in one valley and 80F and sunny as you crest a ridge. Hiking at night without a tent was a big roll of the dice.
As an also not survival instructor (but 24 year Air Force vet and avid outdoorsman since I was knee high to a grasshopper) that was so damn risky and I'm just so happy you made it out safe. There wasn't much info relayed to us in the video regarding your time/pressure constraints but considering how extremely well prepared you usually are, this particular episode absolutely reeked of lack of preparation. I mean, you even had to drive to a store to buy warm clothes for goodness sake. I'm a big fan and a subscriber so I'm really happy you are safe but I watched this video and winced every time another red flag made itself apparent.
You should offer up the coordinates of your other balloon payload. There are treasure seekers who will go to great lengths for less, and the treasure you have left in the wild may be valuable to someone! Great video as always. Thanks for sharing.
Let's call it Foxlin's Law: no matter how much you plan and model the path of a weather balloon, in the end, it will probably find the hardest place to get to and just plop itself there just out of spite.
I've had cameras shutdown due to the cold at much more normal flight levels and temperatures (10,500ft and 15F), so cold shutdown is also a possibility.
I've had HAB cameras shutdown due to cold at altitude so that's likely as well. Actually did an experiment with a cellphone insulated versus not and the insulated one stayed on and the not insulated one shut down. Same cold LiPo issue.
There are 2 ways to think about it. As the air gets thinner, the heat generated by the device has a harder way of being expelled (as it would normally energise the air particles surrounding it), so overheating could be a possibility. However, I personally think that they most likely shut down due to the cold, lithium batteries don't like the cold.
Thank you for including all your safety discussions and decisions when recovering the baloon. So many people just show the adventure, which leads to others not realizing the level of thought and intention behind decisions.
I have one word for you on your next recovery mission Xyla. Paraglider. Slow launch & landing speeds, a fairly quick cruising speeds & with some planning a much better shot at ignoring most of that rough terrain you had to cross. Just something to look into as a collab with a friendly TH-camr perhaps with the flight experience needed for something like this.
Rough terrain, numerous hidden and visible obstacles, completely variable slopes, can't think of a worse place to risk breaking a leg in. This isn't a place you would want to take off from...why would you want to land there? Better advice...add a retro-reflector and bring a drone with a light.
@@RowanHawkins Yes! Building a custom search & rescue drone, specifically to recover equipment that humans would not be able to, or not want to reach in person, sounds like a really fun problem to solve! In some places, that would sound sarcastic, but this is why I was saying how much I like the people here. Lots of creative problem solvers.
@@Inertia888 To be fair, I misread @salimufari's comment and was picturing a small rc-scale paraglider instead of a simple parachute on the helium balloon's payload, not using a paraglider as a SAR vehicle.
For Engineering geeks and Space nerds like me (yes I spanned two generation of name calling) You have an amazing channel and the story and images are amazing. Love that you added the ending with the pictures just showing the earth as it is today. Thank you for posting these.
The cameras overheating makes sense. While the air at the altitudes the balloons are hitting is incredibly cold, it's also very, very thin. There's a lot less heat being carried away because there's a lot less air. Might want to build in a cooling solution that pumps a fluid over the camera's heatsink if it hits a temperature, and a reservoir with something like dry ice to provide plenty of cooling for the whole flight, without weighing much. As a bonus, you could probably do a whole video on it! Test on the ground in a vacuum chamber, see how long you can keep the cameras cool, and see where you can shave off weight.
@@bobeyes3284 The solar radiation is definitely also a factor, but ultimately the main problem is there's much less heat rejection. Sometimes, those GoPros in cases do overheat, especially in hot climates, and the two general pieces of advice given when that happens is shade and airflow. But shade when the goal is to take a video of an eclipse like it was in this case seems... impossible.
Yup. Usually you'd take them apart and get the IC chips that are the hottest in normal condition under bigger aluminium fins (not necessarily mass, just more surface) so they catch more cooling power.
@@nfnworldpeace1992 well you can get a waiver to operate a fixed wing drone at altitude from the FAA then engineering a parachute system to trigger at a certain altitude (30,000ft? 20,000ft) releasing the drone and landing it back as close to the launch site as possible.
At 100000 ft, the temperature is about -48 °F. I suspect your batteries or electronics were simply outside the temperature range they can operate (typically 0C to +70C for consumer integrated circuits, -40C to +85C for extended range industrial chips).
Okay...that footage is stunning. It's easy for me to say this from the sidelines, but I think it was worth the effort to get to the balloon. Nicely done!
Since Xyla has a pilots' license she can probably explain this better, but there are specific rules about what kind of blinky thingies you can send high into the sky. These rules exist for the safety of the public, in particular people in commercial jets (in this case). From experience I can tell you that what actually works really well is to have a HAM Radio operator on your team and set up both an APRS (position + telemetry) transmitter and an RF beacon not incredibly dissimilar from what gets strapped to wildlife for short-term tracking. These are solutions known to be approved by both the FAA and the FCC (in the USA, substitute as appropriate for other countries in the Americas and Europe). You then use radio direction finding techniques to track it down.
Does this mean that you can now justify your hike in Scotland as "training"? Huge recovery effort! Well done to everyone. And from that footage I still cannot fathom how you saw the balloon to recover it. Mind you, your track record of finding stuff that has fallen from the sky is really impressive
Yeah, so, friends of mine were firing rockets from black rock like 20 years ago. I'm glad it's still a thing. That late night hike to recover the balloon is definitely dedication.
I stopped watching this and watched all of Andrew's video and then came back to this. Y'all are amazing people and so are your friends. This gave me so much joy.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! I'm SO glad y'all found the balloon after all that insanity! Y'all are forces of nature. Thank you for supporting the launch!! Couldn't have done it without y'all :) :)
I would very much enjoy working on solving a problem of finding the payload with RC-Flight equipment. It may be my bias, because I love flying remotely, but being able to locate it with an ultra-light RC-Wing, or maybe even recovering it with a drone, carrying a winch and some sort of latching mechanism at the end of the line. A ten-mile round trip, is definitely doable, if the pilot was careful not to waste too much battery capacity. And from what I am understanding from the video, it probably would be less than ten-miles, if the drone was hiked in, as far as it is safe for hiking. It would for sure be satisfying.
@@Inertia888i have an awesome 3d printed claw that I made for recovering my small drone using my big one, which was something I found on thingiverse, so maybe something like that could recover the balloon payload Edited to add, this thing th-cam.com/video/J1DXKC7xv0o/w-d-xo.htmlsi=OIoUUBzSaGv6BHkG
Good video. Xyla has some of the most creative and offbeat projects that always has amazing results. The segments of that balloon in flight is awesome, as well as documenting the hike of Xyla & George in pursuit of the balloon. Great job.
This is so cool! In the 70s, I used to tie notes to large helium balloons and set them free just to see if anyone responded. After about twenty balloons were sent, I got one response. It was a fun thing to do. It's something that I might do again, some day.
The footage you did get is wonderful! I bet you don't need to be told this, but you are living so many people's dreams. Thanks for sharing the adventure with us!
I enjoy watching you work out problems.. Not so much the technical difficulties but the straightforward stuff. How to bend wood, your guitar and tensegrity, insegreity tengrity, floating table projects. Working out how to waterproof electrics, see through canoe. But the colab with Veritasium tickled all the boxes. And there was blood everywhere...a very fizzy noggin Xyla...
You might not have got the shot, but it was an amazing story! I'm just glad you survived the trek and made it back without discovering the sharp parts of the local wildlife first hand (or face or any other body part). I'm also glad you had a hiking buddy and a friend at base camp who could call in the cavalry if you got lost or were out of contact for too long. These are sensible precautions for such a crazy undertaking.
If you ever happen to do a launch in WA and you need someone willing to help track down a lost balloon, give a shout, i am ALWAYS happy to help! Or if ya just need an extra pair o hands on a build, or whatever else.
If you're going to keep doing the weather balloon thing, You need to team up with rctestflight or David Windestaal (who's done it) to make you a camera platform that can guide itself to a predetermined landing zone, rather than fall purely at the mercy of the wind.
That was f* awesome Xyla! You managed the "go fever" such that the hike was safely completed and made for the best adventure so kudos to you. My dad always reminded me, before some crazy adventure that I was about to start, that good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement. Nicely done :)
Funny how the color coding of gas cylinders seems to be different on different continents. Here in Europe a green cylinder with a grey shoulder would be argon-CO2 mix used for MAG-welding, helium would be brown.
I would suspect that, if the cameras overheated it has to do with the very low pressures at that altitude. (At 100K ft, the pressure is only about 10mb, or 1/100th of standard sea level pressure.) Thus, there wasn't enough air available to dissipate the heat buildup, and the wood frame wouldn't provide a very good heat sink. Perhaps an aluminum frame would be a better choice for future endeavors?
Do you plan on releasing any of the raw 360 footage for the balloon you did recover? Being able to watch that ascent and the balloon reaching its apex in a Visor would be amazing.
Big fan. Your best video yet. Real adventure and great memories with your friends. Way to go!!! As an aside my first airplane was also a Cessna 140, then a 170 and I now fly a Cessna 180 on amphibs during the summer months. Looking forward to an airplane video from you as well.
Fun project idea! This may challenge typical viewership since it doesn’t involve rockets, fire, powertools or the words “botaltoat,” but it’s still waay awesome! Keep pushing the comfort zone!
Pro Tip: Water-proof ANYTHING (including any SHOE, if you need to hike in a creek) with just 100% Silicone caulk, naphtha, and a trash bag. @NightHawkInLight has a GREAT vid on how to!
Thank-you for your extreme efforts that day. Was worth it to be reminded that we live on a beautiful blue ball, that we should be thankful for that and do whatever we can to look after it!
I wonder if it's feasible to build a small, very lightweight automatic glider that would serve as a platform for cameras and such. Have the standard parachute as a backup but have a flight computer onboard that would cut the link to the parachute (this way the platform acts as a normal parachute platform if the connection isn't cut properly) and begin to glide somewhere predetermined as safe and easy to get to using gps to figure out where it is and where it wants to be. You could have another parachute deploy at a much lower altitude, maybe a few hundred meters, so the glider would try to get to where it wanted to go and then deploy the parachute no matter what or it would get where it was trying to go and then circle its way down until it hit altitude. Even if it isn't feasible (which it probably isn't) it would be a really neat challenge for someone or someones much smarter than me.
I wonder: how much would it have cost you to rent a helicopter to retrieve the ballons? This makes for more exciting drama, but Xyla rapelling from a helicopter while yelling "Hut! Hut! Hut!" (like the swat teams in The Blues Brothers, not like a quarterback!) would make my day...
I was on the playa bikepacking that day with a group of freinds. The next day we found a couple of rocket parachutes on the very northern end of the playa not to far from the hotsprings.
Regarding your camera overheating, do you think it could be the thinness of the atmosphere at that altitude? The closer you get to a vacuum, the less medium (such as gas or a liquid) there is for conduction or convection to occur.
Love y our Content Xyla - your excuberance for Learning is unmatched! if I might be so bold as to offer a handy hint for next time, or for anyone else - with the Flickering LEDs, you can use a simple method to get rid of it in Post Production. Duplicate the clip in your timeline by adding it...let's say above the original clip. Then zoom right in and move the Duplicated clip just 1 Frame along, and change it's opacity to 50% - Typically speaking it shouldn't be enough "out of sync" to show ghosting, because having also changed the opacity prodominately the Illuminated sections of the frame will show more than anything without light, and this SHOULD then be in sync across each of the 2 frames where the LED cycles from ON to Off in time with the framerate of the camera.
I am not certain I can figure out how you pulled this off, even after watching the entire video. At least part of your success is the strength of your personality (for want of a better word), you just power through obstacles. Although you did pull back when you aborted chasing daylight with too little time remaining; Which reassured me that you could still make rational decisions. You are an amazing person.
Weather balloon and rocket launch, very cool. How about a rocket launch FROM the weather balloon? I know that will be tough, as you would have to make sure the rocket is small enough to be a balloon payload. But launching from 100k ft would let if fly a LOT. Cool video, and what an amazing adventure to find that.
Xyla. From experience on a adventure up the coast of WA Australia for the eclipse here. Get yourself a small drone that has a good design like the mini pro 3. At night.. it would not have helped but for the day I used it a few times to do a reccy and scout ahead and over ridges to see where I was and get myself situated (and safe) when things were looking a little dire. Worth every cent
there is not much air to dissipate heat at that altitude albeit it is colder. attach heatsinks, if you don't want to deal with it, paint them white and remove battery from inside, power externally.
It really shows how hard that hike was. Just listen to them. That, PLUS the map. What an adventure! XD Guys... I can't be into aerospace like this... too much exercise... XP
![[#2024MAMA] ROSÉ (로제), Bruno Mars - APT. | Mnet 241122 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dgGqD28J6aQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Oh hey, flew gopro hero 3s on HABs back in the day. They didn't overheat, they "ran out of battery". They pull harder on cold batteries and thus the voltage was lower and it thought it was out of battery. It warms up and magically has battery again! Encasing them in the plastic waterporrf case helped, as did hand warmers.
Lithium Ion batteries are well known to be temp sensitive. The reaction slows down at lower temperature and they will appear to have a much lower capacity. This is why for a lot of amateur high altitude launches they use lithium primary cells, they have a much lower operating temperature and are used for a lot of extreme environment applications.
All I can say young lady is, wowzzers!!!❤️🤗🤗🤗🤠🇺🇲😎
As a survival instructor (and a CFI, for that matter), I'm glad that you (a) found your payload and (b) made it back out safely. That said: What. Were. You. Thinking? I imagine you had time pressure for return airline flights, etc., but you took big risks (that could easily have escalated into a SAR situation, thus risking others) when it would have made far more sense to start out on the retrieve expedition equipped to bivouac (or even camp in relative comfort) at nightfall, then complete the retrieve the next day. And I speculate it wouldn't have taken much longer, considering how much faster you'd have been able to route-find and move over the terrain in daylight.
Also--since you always seem to have plenty of friends with vehicles to bring stuff out to the Playa, why don't you come up in your Cessna? That way you'd have it to scout the retrieve before heading out into the boonies.
Stay safe and keep having fun and sharing it with us!
As not a survival instructor (but an average hiker)... yeah. The weather can change fast in the mountains and weather forecasts that far from populations centers are more of a gesture. I've seen things like hail in one valley and 80F and sunny as you crest a ridge. Hiking at night without a tent was a big roll of the dice.
As an also not survival instructor (but 24 year Air Force vet and avid outdoorsman since I was knee high to a grasshopper) that was so damn risky and I'm just so happy you made it out safe. There wasn't much info relayed to us in the video regarding your time/pressure constraints but considering how extremely well prepared you usually are, this particular episode absolutely reeked of lack of preparation. I mean, you even had to drive to a store to buy warm clothes for goodness sake.
I'm a big fan and a subscriber so I'm really happy you are safe but I watched this video and winced every time another red flag made itself apparent.
You should offer up the coordinates of your other balloon payload. There are treasure seekers who will go to great lengths for less, and the treasure you have left in the wild may be valuable to someone! Great video as always. Thanks for sharing.
Let's call it Foxlin's Law: no matter how much you plan and model the path of a weather balloon, in the end, it will probably find the hardest place to get to and just plop itself there just out of spite.
Yes! 😂 100%! I'm a big fan of "Foxlin's Law".👍
They say weather balloons are powered by spite, so that checks out.
Some things run better with a dash of Spite…🚀
I've had cameras shutdown due to the cold at much more normal flight levels and temperatures (10,500ft and 15F), so cold shutdown is also a possibility.
I've had HAB cameras shutdown due to cold at altitude so that's likely as well. Actually did an experiment with a cellphone insulated versus not and the insulated one stayed on and the not insulated one shut down. Same cold LiPo issue.
There are 2 ways to think about it. As the air gets thinner, the heat generated by the device has a harder way of being expelled (as it would normally energise the air particles surrounding it), so overheating could be a possibility. However, I personally think that they most likely shut down due to the cold, lithium batteries don't like the cold.
Thank you for including all your safety discussions and decisions when recovering the baloon. So many people just show the adventure, which leads to others not realizing the level of thought and intention behind decisions.
I have one word for you on your next recovery mission Xyla. Paraglider. Slow launch & landing speeds, a fairly quick cruising speeds & with some planning a much better shot at ignoring most of that rough terrain you had to cross. Just something to look into as a collab with a friendly TH-camr perhaps with the flight experience needed for something like this.
ooooh! A paraglider with ardupilot doing a return to launch site sounds like a fantastic project, too.
@@RichardBetel Oh my! I love the people here! So many ideas and creativity!
Rough terrain, numerous hidden and visible obstacles, completely variable slopes, can't think of a worse place to risk breaking a leg in. This isn't a place you would want to take off from...why would you want to land there?
Better advice...add a retro-reflector and bring a drone with a light.
@@RowanHawkins Yes! Building a custom search & rescue drone, specifically to recover equipment that humans would not be able to, or not want to reach in person, sounds like a really fun problem to solve! In some places, that would sound sarcastic, but this is why I was saying how much I like the people here. Lots of creative problem solvers.
@@Inertia888 To be fair, I misread @salimufari's comment and was picturing a small rc-scale paraglider instead of a simple parachute on the helium balloon's payload, not using a paraglider as a SAR vehicle.
For Engineering geeks and Space nerds like me (yes I spanned two generation of name calling) You have an amazing channel and the story and images are amazing. Love that you added the ending with the pictures just showing the earth as it is today. Thank you for posting these.
The cameras overheating makes sense. While the air at the altitudes the balloons are hitting is incredibly cold, it's also very, very thin. There's a lot less heat being carried away because there's a lot less air. Might want to build in a cooling solution that pumps a fluid over the camera's heatsink if it hits a temperature, and a reservoir with something like dry ice to provide plenty of cooling for the whole flight, without weighing much.
As a bonus, you could probably do a whole video on it! Test on the ground in a vacuum chamber, see how long you can keep the cameras cool, and see where you can shave off weight.
So why don't go pro's overheat when in a case? More likely to be just the sun heating its surface.
If anyone could do this, Xyla could.
@@bobeyes3284 The solar radiation is definitely also a factor, but ultimately the main problem is there's much less heat rejection. Sometimes, those GoPros in cases do overheat, especially in hot climates, and the two general pieces of advice given when that happens is shade and airflow. But shade when the goal is to take a video of an eclipse like it was in this case seems... impossible.
Would dry ice have the heat capacity to deal with all the heat?
Yup. Usually you'd take them apart and get the IC chips that are the hottest in normal condition under bigger aluminium fins (not necessarily mass, just more surface) so they catch more cooling power.
Prediction on next video: "I just had to recover that second balloon. And that is why I got my helicopter license..."
she just needs a good collab with some long range drone guys and they can find that thing in a breeze
Or "I sent a drone into space........and flew it back down."
@@handlemonium sadly drones cant opperate that high, but if you're into it there are some amazing long distance and high altitude fpv vids on here
@@nfnworldpeace1992 well you can get a waiver to operate a fixed wing drone at altitude from the FAA then engineering a parachute system to trigger at a certain altitude (30,000ft? 20,000ft) releasing the drone and landing it back as close to the launch site as possible.
At 100000 ft, the temperature is about -48 °F. I suspect your batteries or electronics were simply outside the temperature range they can operate (typically 0C to +70C for consumer integrated circuits, -40C to +85C for extended range industrial chips).
Okay...that footage is stunning. It's easy for me to say this from the sidelines, but I think it was worth the effort to get to the balloon. Nicely done!
No bear,
no mountain lion,
no snake...
A happy little night walk.
Only messing.
😂😂😂
I imagine, somewhere out there, the second camera is getting demolished by a coyote.
yeah that night hike was a bit sketchy.
Would it be worth the weight to add a LED flasher to the next balloon in case you need to recover it in the dark?
I would add a radio beacon too.
Perhaps also an audible signal that could drive a buzzer for days off a cr2032. Minimal weight and an extra help.
@@sac58999you mean one of those never stopping singing birthday carts? I guess that’ll attract some attention.
That is a solution that would make any engineer proud!👍
Since Xyla has a pilots' license she can probably explain this better, but there are specific rules about what kind of blinky thingies you can send high into the sky. These rules exist for the safety of the public, in particular people in commercial jets (in this case).
From experience I can tell you that what actually works really well is to have a HAM Radio operator on your team and set up both an APRS (position + telemetry) transmitter and an RF beacon not incredibly dissimilar from what gets strapped to wildlife for short-term tracking. These are solutions known to be approved by both the FAA and the FCC (in the USA, substitute as appropriate for other countries in the Americas and Europe). You then use radio direction finding techniques to track it down.
Does this mean that you can now justify your hike in Scotland as "training"?
Huge recovery effort! Well done to everyone. And from that footage I still cannot fathom how you saw the balloon to recover it. Mind you, your track record of finding stuff that has fallen from the sky is really impressive
Yeah, so, friends of mine were firing rockets from black rock like 20 years ago. I'm glad it's still a thing. That late night hike to recover the balloon is definitely dedication.
The recovery is always fun! But that was a real adventure... Glad 6ou found the ballon and equipment.
I stopped watching this and watched all of Andrew's video and then came back to this. Y'all are amazing people and so are your friends. This gave me so much joy.
I appreciate the strobe warning. Not enough people realize how nice that is. Thank you 🙏
This is why I watch your channel. I never know what to expect from one week to the next.
You had me at “Ok” ~ Love your energy and how you live your style Xyla. Wishing you another Best Day Ever.
~Mark
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!
I'm SO glad y'all found the balloon after all that insanity! Y'all are forces of nature.
Thank you for supporting the launch!! Couldn't have done it without y'all :) :)
Love the rockets balloons and energetic Xyla engineer builder entertainer. What a crazy hike!
Weather balloon footage is always incredible to watch.
Glad the nomad internet helped when you were in need! Great luck for a sponsorship to line up like that.
Glad you didn't get hurt on that hike!
The Texas Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Nomad in mid 2023. Read CNET, Forbes, and Trustpilot reviews.
Have you thought about using a drone to locate and retrieve the 2nd balloon?
And that when that drone loses signal and crashes, get a 2nd drone to fetch the first drone..
Why fly a drone when she can fly?
I would very much enjoy working on solving a problem of finding the payload with RC-Flight equipment. It may be my bias, because I love flying remotely, but being able to locate it with an ultra-light RC-Wing, or maybe even recovering it with a drone, carrying a winch and some sort of latching mechanism at the end of the line. A ten-mile round trip, is definitely doable, if the pilot was careful not to waste too much battery capacity. And from what I am understanding from the video, it probably would be less than ten-miles, if the drone was hiked in, as far as it is safe for hiking. It would for sure be satisfying.
@@Inertia888i have an awesome 3d printed claw that I made for recovering my small drone using my big one, which was something I found on thingiverse, so maybe something like that could recover the balloon payload
Edited to add, this thing th-cam.com/video/J1DXKC7xv0o/w-d-xo.htmlsi=OIoUUBzSaGv6BHkG
Good video. Xyla has some of the most creative and offbeat projects that always has amazing results. The segments of that balloon in flight is awesome, as well as documenting the hike of Xyla & George in pursuit of the balloon. Great job.
always good when the video starts with Xyla : "This is Bad" ;)
Unbelievable, a whole Xyla Foxlin video without one drop of epoxy.... LOL
This is so cool! In the 70s, I used to tie notes to large helium balloons and set them free just to see if anyone responded. After about twenty balloons were sent, I got one response. It was a fun thing to do. It's something that I might do again, some day.
I would love to float up that high and see the earth from that view. Totally awesome what you do and the views you give us. Thank you
it's crazy that you can get so high that you see the gradient from the atmosphere and gravity still pulls it back in.
Great video Xyla and friends. 7:52 Good to see a safe safe distance. Looking forward to your holiday special.
I wonder if painting electronics housings with NightHawkInLight's Infrared Cooling Paint could be used to help radiate heat away at high altitudes.
9:28 "it might get a little dark at the end" - poor sap, i think he's already at the end. i wish i could save him
The footage you did get is wonderful! I bet you don't need to be told this, but you are living so many people's dreams. Thanks for sharing the adventure with us!
I enjoy watching you work out problems.. Not so much the technical difficulties but the straightforward stuff. How to bend wood, your guitar and tensegrity, insegreity tengrity, floating table projects. Working out how to waterproof electrics, see through canoe. But the colab with Veritasium tickled all the boxes. And there was blood everywhere...a very fizzy noggin Xyla...
You might not have got the shot, but it was an amazing story! I'm just glad you survived the trek and made it back without discovering the sharp parts of the local wildlife first hand (or face or any other body part). I'm also glad you had a hiking buddy and a friend at base camp who could call in the cavalry if you got lost or were out of contact for too long. These are sensible precautions for such a crazy undertaking.
If you ever happen to do a launch in WA and you need someone willing to help track down a lost balloon, give a shout, i am ALWAYS happy to help! Or if ya just need an extra pair o hands on a build, or whatever else.
If you're going to keep doing the weather balloon thing, You need to team up with rctestflight or David Windestaal (who's done it) to make you a camera platform that can guide itself to a predetermined landing zone, rather than fall purely at the mercy of the wind.
Thank you for bringing us along on this journey.
That was f* awesome Xyla! You managed the "go fever" such that the hike was safely completed and made for the best adventure so kudos to you. My dad always reminded me, before some crazy adventure that I was about to start, that good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement. Nicely done :)
The earth from space is a beautiful thing to behold.
Clicked for the title, stayed for the adventure! Wow did that sponsor get much more than they probably thought they would going in. Life saver!
You are such a nerdy goober! Great video. Continue to follow your dreams and cross barriers. Great video from the weather balloon.
I spend several weekends a year out in the middle of the Black Rock Desert. It is a special, magical place.
Next time (we all know there will be a next time) you need to add a marker strobe light to the payload package.
Funny how the color coding of gas cylinders seems to be different on different continents. Here in Europe a green cylinder with a grey shoulder would be argon-CO2 mix used for MAG-welding, helium would be brown.
I would suspect that, if the cameras overheated it has to do with the very low pressures at that altitude. (At 100K ft, the pressure is only about 10mb, or 1/100th of standard sea level pressure.) Thus, there wasn't enough air available to dissipate the heat buildup, and the wood frame wouldn't provide a very good heat sink. Perhaps an aluminum frame would be a better choice for future endeavors?
Maybe you could encase majority of the GoPro in nanogel. It may insulate from the heat with the least weight as possible.
Hardcore recovery adventure, you really know how to have a good time.
Do you plan on releasing any of the raw 360 footage for the balloon you did recover? Being able to watch that ascent and the balloon reaching its apex in a Visor would be amazing.
Big fan. Your best video yet. Real adventure and great memories with your friends. Way to go!!!
As an aside my first airplane was also a Cessna 140, then a 170 and I now fly a Cessna 180 on amphibs during the summer months. Looking forward to an airplane video from you as well.
Fun project idea! This may challenge typical viewership since it doesn’t involve rockets, fire, powertools or the words “botaltoat,” but it’s still waay awesome! Keep pushing the comfort zone!
Cool trek and quite a marathon recovery. Great production Xyla. Thanks for Sharing!!
Wear your hiking boots when you are hiking. It keps you dry. Enjoyed your adventure.
Pro Tip: Water-proof ANYTHING (including any SHOE, if you need to hike in a creek) with just 100% Silicone caulk, naphtha, and a trash bag. @NightHawkInLight has a GREAT vid on how to!
Thank-you for your extreme efforts that day. Was worth it to be reminded that we live on a beautiful blue ball, that we should be thankful for that and do whatever we can to look after it!
You should get 10 of those balloons have it take you up and sky dive down.😎
I bet you could find a few people that would be happy to retrieve that for you.
It would be fun for a lot of us.
That’s an adventure you’ll always remember - and that footage was definitely worth the pain! Thanks for sharing it with us :)
I think with as many times as you've done this it still is always amazing to get that high and seeing the curvature.
@1:42 - 😮 - I am honestly shocked that was your first time out to Black Rock. It's a lovely place!
That’s some INSANE adventure to get the cameras!!! This is something one will remember for a lifetime!
Not sure about everyone else, but you are the friend i always wish i had haha
I'd completely forgotten about the eclippse . That treck was a Straight line challenge . 116K ft, way over any plane. Nice work.
I thought you meant flight on a plane and then got disappointed and then anxious and excited because the hike was insane. Great vid
I wonder if it's feasible to build a small, very lightweight automatic glider that would serve as a platform for cameras and such. Have the standard parachute as a backup but have a flight computer onboard that would cut the link to the parachute (this way the platform acts as a normal parachute platform if the connection isn't cut properly) and begin to glide somewhere predetermined as safe and easy to get to using gps to figure out where it is and where it wants to be. You could have another parachute deploy at a much lower altitude, maybe a few hundred meters, so the glider would try to get to where it wanted to go and then deploy the parachute no matter what or it would get where it was trying to go and then circle its way down until it hit altitude. Even if it isn't feasible (which it probably isn't) it would be a really neat challenge for someone or someones much smarter than me.
OMG the shots of the ring in the video!!!!! Amazing adventure you had. Hiking in the dark though???
Absolutely beautiful! We loved seeing it all come together ❤
11:40 "There's no signal there" is the exact moment my wifi cut out.
I wonder: how much would it have cost you to rent a helicopter to retrieve the ballons? This makes for more exciting drama, but Xyla rapelling from a helicopter while yelling "Hut! Hut! Hut!" (like the swat teams in The Blues Brothers, not like a quarterback!) would make my day...
The action movie climax vibe would suit Xyla so well.
I was on the playa bikepacking that day with a group of freinds. The next day we found a couple of rocket parachutes on the very northern end of the playa not to far from the hotsprings.
Just know that you're not the only ones to get screwed by google maps and their "call this thing a road" ways in northern NV.
Having and chasing crazie improbable Ideas is what makes us human... Dont ever stop dreaming, don't ever stop chasing your dreams.
Congrats on the recovery. Sorry for your friends rocket. I was kind of guessing that was what the group hug was about. 😞
Someone with a helicopter could make a neat bit of content extracting that second payload!
Your videos are the best! Thanks for sharing your adventures with us.
This is such a great story, and it looks like an awesome adventure! Thanks so much for sharing this! 🧡
I thought Skelly was epic! What a fun adventure! For us anyway, maybe not so much for you guys trying to the balloon. Great video! ❤
You need like a giant recovery drone or something at this rate because the retrivals just seem to be getting more difficult!
Regarding your camera overheating, do you think it could be the thinness of the atmosphere at that altitude? The closer you get to a vacuum, the less medium (such as gas or a liquid) there is for conduction or convection to occur.
Seems like a sign to invest in an ATV and always bring it along too.
Love y our Content Xyla - your excuberance for Learning is unmatched!
if I might be so bold as to offer a handy hint for next time, or for anyone else - with the Flickering LEDs, you can use a simple method to get rid of it in Post Production.
Duplicate the clip in your timeline by adding it...let's say above the original clip. Then zoom right in and move the Duplicated clip just 1 Frame along, and change it's opacity to 50% - Typically speaking it shouldn't be enough "out of sync" to show ghosting, because having also changed the opacity prodominately the Illuminated sections of the frame will show more than anything without light, and this SHOULD then be in sync across each of the 2 frames where the LED cycles from ON to Off in time with the framerate of the camera.
Congratulations, you have passed Overland Navigation.
That tingly feeling is probably from the fact that it can be damn cold in the desert first thing in the morning.
That hike was surprisingly kind of fun though
This was such a fun video to watch! Thank you for all your hard work in putting it together for us.😊
I am not certain I can figure out how you pulled this off, even after watching the entire video.
At least part of your success is the strength of your personality (for want of a better word), you just power through obstacles. Although you did pull back when you aborted chasing daylight with too little time remaining; Which reassured me that you could still make rational decisions.
You are an amazing person.
Weather balloon and rocket launch, very cool. How about a rocket launch FROM the weather balloon? I know that will be tough, as you would have to make sure the rocket is small enough to be a balloon payload. But launching from 100k ft would let if fly a LOT. Cool video, and what an amazing adventure to find that.
Xyla. From experience on a adventure up the coast of WA Australia for the eclipse here. Get yourself a small drone that has a good design like the mini pro 3. At night.. it would not have helped but for the day I used it a few times to do a reccy and scout ahead and over ridges to see where I was and get myself situated (and safe) when things were looking a little dire.
Worth every cent
My brother in law was a cowboy in that area. He rides those ranges all the time. He could probably find that balloon.
there is not much air to dissipate heat at that altitude albeit it is colder.
attach heatsinks, if you don't want to deal with it, paint them white and remove battery from inside, power externally.
All hail xyla, the space queen.
Now we know where all the Air Ballon that the air force have to track and shoot down was coming from!
Those sunglasses are killer!
It really shows how hard that hike was. Just listen to them. That, PLUS the map. What an adventure! XD
Guys... I can't be into aerospace like this... too much exercise... XP
Epic material as always. I can't believe you hiked that far in a stream. Amazing. Kudos.
I busted out laughing at the idea of an F-22 Raptor showing up out of nowhere.
Cool Adventure glad you are still alive Xyla!!!
Sometimes engineering is scary! What an adventure.
Great balloon footage!