Planning the Balloon

I have been going over this for months now, and researching, assembling and generally solving problems to the best of my ability.  There are a lot of pages out there that have documented how they have launched and some of the process, but I am finding that it is often the little things that can be problematic as I have been working on this.

Because of that experience, I am going to try and document the parts I used and why.  I will also try and document a few of the alternatives, and my reasoning for not using them where applicable.

I think the first thing that was a challenge was finding how different teams had done each of the separate elements of their balloons. For instance, how do you connect the parachute to a fragile foam structure?  Things like that you don't think of until you are well down the road.  Accordingly, I am going to try to break my posts up into pieces that focus on the individual elements and how we chose to solve the problems.

I will start at the top and work down thusly:

1. The balloon.  Selection, sourcing and size
2.  Hydrogen or Helium.  Considerations for both
3. Closing off the balloon and connecting to the rest of your rig.
4. The parachute
5. Attaching the parachute to the payload
6. The payload container
7. The payload - tracking
8. The payload - cameras
9. The payload - fun
10. Making and Attaching the radar reflector
11. Ground equipment
12. Procedures and equipment for filling the balloon
13. Procedures for activating and starting the payload equipment
14. Launching the balloon
15. Tracking from the ground
16. Recovery

It is a little bit ambitious, but I hope to use the above list to help me work through all the various bits and pieces of the project.  By documenting what we are doing, I hope I can spot any flaws and make changes before launch.