As many of you may know we have successfully recovered the K4WCU (Catamount-4) Balloon. The write up below was written by Al, WD4A, and Chuck, W3WZN. Much thanks to them for tracking the information.

We have also Posted Pictures from the flight Check them out here! – K4WCU (Catamount-4) Baloon Slideshow

Catamount-4 Track and Recovery Teams, Along with the Property Owner, and Stakeholders taken as the balloon was first discovered

Stats:
· Launch: 10:06 AM ET Dec 15 from Jackson County Airport – Cullowhee, NC
· Maximum observed altitude (via APRS): 83,712 feet at 17:18:341 UTC (12:18:34 ET)
· One packet seen at 88,656 at 17:22:37 UTC but is likely erroneous since the packet immediately before and after were much lower
· After balloon burst, the payload was falling at 119 mph (174 fps for first 60 seconds) (10,469 feet in 60 seconds)
· At one time the balloon was observed to be traveling over 150 MPH horizontally!
· Landed near Wingate College in Monroe, NC at position N 35 00.87 W 080 25.66 (track picture below)
· last report to aprs.fi on Dec 16 at 12:11:17 UTC (7:11:17 AM ET) altitude 639 ft
· Distance traveled: 158.5 Mi at heading of 96.8 degrees

Hunt Highlights:
· At one point we were afraid we had lost the balloon payload as we did not hear the APRS or beacon for about a hour
· We got lucky after driving near the site of the last transmitted packet and just barley heard the beacon
· We converged on the payload by direction finding the beacon once we could hear it well enough
· Balloon was first found by following the sound of a piezo buzzer installed for that purpose
· The payload was hung up about 35 feet above the ground in a dead, rotten Sweet Gum tree -Tree branches easily snapped off when climbing attempts were made.
· We were unable to retrieve the payload on Saturday evening as dark overtook our efforts
· All chasers except except two (W3WZN, & W3WDD returned to Western NC Saturday night
· The landowner was found on Saturday night and permission was granted to cut down the tree
· Sunday afternoon the payload was retrieved around 1:25 PM

· All equipment in the payload was safe and secure although some of the batteries powering various pieces of equipment had become depleted

Flight Path of the Catamount-4