I wrote the last article, sort of convincing myself it is going to fly and went to sleep, that was Thursday. Friday I started freaking out again and thought that my last bits of dignity won’t let me fail in front of audience so I decided do a “dry-run” and fill in balloon to make sure it really flies.
I did few improvements to the generator in past days (I plan cover this in another post) and while production was pretty good a new electrolyte basin (6l Vogue St/St Gastro Tray from Nisbets) was so much cleaned with detergent that it surprised me being pretty bubbly and I had to do several runs. Anyway, and practically on the last moment, it took off!
However it was giving just a negligible lift so I decided to scrap the public release plan and rather spare our precious hydrogen for the Phase II. Still I wanted to make boys happy so they can have a bit of fun with balloon so I’ve left Sebi to cut it off and put it on the line.
Sebi had a bit of fun with that afterwards, trying to release the balloon on the line.
Balloon stayed attached to the shed over the night and as far as I know there were no UFO sightings were reported through the night! While to my surprise next morning, when sun heated that balloon and it seemed to be much more eager to fly than previous night!
Timo came to check on how’s that all working.
Knowing that everything is in a good hands we’ve departed with dogs for a walk, while started getting calls & messages from Simon, reporting first UFO sighting! (Following picture is taken from Simon’s garden ~50m away from our house. 😀 )
Came back with dogs and suddenly balloon decided that it wants to go for a ride and took off and left. Boys went to chase it, bit it was already heading towards Bribie island-ish on its way to the blue sky.
I still had some plans with it, at least I really wanted to wight the balloon without the Hydrogen to see how close/far I was in my calculations, but it is too late now. Too late to think of it now. At least I gave it a name – Little guy and took its last picture while leaving.
This wraps out our Phase I: Hydrogen Balloon
- Glue together a 1m3 balloon from Mylar [COMPLETED]
- Check if it can be pressurised with the air [COMPLETED]
- Check how long it stay pressurised [COMPLETED]
- Develop tech to patch it [COMPLETED]
- Build a POC Hydrogen Generator [COMPLETED]
- Fill Balloon with Hydrogen [COMPLETED]
- How long does it takes to fill? [TBA]
- Measure its lifting power and calculate its volume as per Hydrogen [DNF]
- Release the balloon on a tether and get it back [COMPLETED]
- Measure how long it stays pressurised [DNF]
- Final: Prepare a “message in a bottle” and release it [DNF]
Cost: $703.96 AUD
I call it success! I really had some good fun! 🙂
