New England Weather Balloon Society - New England Sci-Tech Inc

HomeNew England Weather Balloon Society

Welcome to the New England Weather Balloon Society (NEWBS)

Hosted by New England Sci-Tech, 16 Tech Circle, Natick, MA.

If you would like to get involved as a member, mentor, instructor, or to launch a payload, please email us at newbsballoons@gmail.com. We are always very interested to connect with other high altitude balloon groups and hobbyists.

Mission Statement

The New England Weather Balloon Society is dedicated to the collaborative and iterative process of building and launching high altitude balloon engineering and science projects. This club brings together like minded tinkerers, engineers, and hams to work on exciting projects and launches. We work with middle school, high school, and college students as well as new and experienced adults.

How/Where We Meet

NEWBS Discord

Send us an email at newbsballoons@gmail.com and tell us a bit about yourself to gain access to the NEWBS Discord server. The NEWBS Discord server hosts a thriving community of builders, makers, engineers, and members of the scientific and weather communities.

Sci-Tech Makerspace

Join us in the NESciTech makerspace on Saturdays as we plan, build, and test our latest high altitude projects.

Watch our flight footage on YouTube!

This Year's Projects

MIT - Morning Star Missions: Morning Star Missions

We worked with aerospace engineering graduate student Claire Buffington, project lead Prof. Sara Seager, and members of their team at MIT to rig up, launch, and recover a high altitude balloon to test electronics and parachute design for future Venus missions. Balloon was launched from New England Sci-Tech, and tracking was done using Tiny4FSK and a re-flashed RS41 radiosonde as backup. We also added a few electronics to the payload for a science experiment of our own to detect cosmic rays with a Geiger counter.

Hack Club - Apex: Apex

This project was done in partnership with Hack Club, a global non-profit community of high school coding enthusiasts. For this project, students from around the world formed teams, came up with project ideas, presented proposals and 12 teams were selected to fly their payloads on high altitude balloons, launched by NEWBS here in Massachusetts. Members of winning teams were flown out to Boston, and stayed for 3 days here at the New England Sci-Tech makerspace, finalizing their projects, launching, and presenting. On June 21st, 2-3 balloons were launched simultaneously, each containing 5-8 payloads. Tracking hardware for each balloon included a Tiny4FSK and a re-flashed RS41 as backup.

StratoScience Lab 2025: StratoScience

StratoScience Lab is a class for middle and high school students to design and launch a high altitude balloon full of scientific and engineering experiments. Each student will design and own their own experiment, as well as help with payload integration, launch, tracking, and recovery.

2025 StratoScience Lab sponsors include:

ARDC (Amateur Radio Digital Communications)
Take-Two Interactive: Ghost Story Games

Previous sponsors include:

Tiny4FSK: Tiny4FSK

Tiny4FSK is a custom designed high altitude balloon tracker board that uses Horus Binary v2 and modern components to achieve a high signal to noise ratio, fast beacon rate, low power, and tiny and lightweight form factor. This project is in progress and not yet available for sale; however, recent flight tests of the rev. 4 board show excellent performance at all altitudes and a long battery life. More information can be found on the github page: https://github.com/New-England-Weather-Balloon-Society/Tiny4FSK?tab=readme-ov-file

Tiny4FSK Logo

Join the Hunt for Radiosondes

Twice a day, every day, radiosondes are launched all around the world. These are tiny high altitude balloons with electronic sensor packages and radio transmitters attached. NEWBS dedicates itself to finding and recovering as many of these radiosondes as possible.

Learn More About Radiosonde Hunting

In the News

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/02/27/metro/facing-scrutiny-like-never-before-new-englands-amateur-balloonists-are-feeling-pressure/

https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/video/watch-weather-education-day-at-gillette-stadium/

https://www.wickedlocal.com/picture-gallery/country-gazette/2021/03/03/photos-max-kendalls-weather-balloon-project/6897504002/

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/65561515/medway-millis-may-2021

https://ema.arrl.org/2021/03/07/womxx-experimenting-with-weather-balloons/

https://ema.arrl.org/2021/07/08/w0mxx-high-altitude-ballooning-going-to-the-edge-of-space-at-sci-tech-ars-meeting-july-13-2021/

Note: The following are behind a paywall

https://www.milforddailynews.com/story/news/2021/03/05/medway-boy-building-weather-balloon-looking-form-balloon-club/6907910002/

https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/country-gazette/2021/03/04/medway-boy-building-weather-balloon-looking-form-balloon-club/6892717002/

Previous Projects

StratoScience Lab 2024 - We launched 2 balloons with our students, who had working on their projects for 8 months as part of our annual Stratoscience program. The first balloon contained a glider designed with an autopilot system to aim itself toward its intended landing location (developed by Charlie Nicholson). The second contained a payload with multiple student projects, including a solar tracker, a spectroscopy sensor, humidity sensors with different moisture barriers, a digital heater system, an IMU, and two cameras. We also had a team working on various elements of a "Rockoon" (rocket designed to launch from a high altitude balloon) project, work for which will continue into the next year.

Great Plains Super Launch 2024 - We attended a high altitude balloon convention this year in Colorado Springs. Max presented at the Symposium about Tiny4FSK, and we launched a balloon together with Mike KD2EAT of Cornell University, sharing a payload line for multiple experiments and cameras. We included two camera payloads and one of our student's experiments.

Tiny4FSK: Tiny4FSK

Work on Tiny4FSK began in 2024, leading eventually to test flights with the Rev. 3 tracker. At this time, all board prototypes were hand soldered. Eventually, all Rev. 4 boards have since become manufactured, including soldering and parts assembly, by PCBWay. After flight success had been demonstrated, Max started giving talks and presentations at the Sci-Tech Amateur Radio Society, 4-H Foundation, and the NEWSDR 2024 conference at WPI to promote this ongoing open source project.

Tiny4FSK Logo

HABGab + StratoScience Lab 2023 - This was launched on July 22nd from Fiskdale, MA with a second launch on July 30th from Winsted, CT.

This was a joint flight containing a repeater made from 2 linked Baofeng F8-HPs, called HABGab, and collection of student experiments created as part of our StratoScience Lab class at New England Sci-Tech.

HABGab 2023 was been made possible thanks to a grant from the

American Radio Relay League (ARRL).

StratoScience Lab was made possible thanks to these sponsors:

Take-Two Interactive: Ghost Story Games

Eversole Associates

Gradient

WildWest Dan

AI Measurements

Ghost Story Games Eversole Gradient Wild West Dan AIMeasurements

WildWestDan High Altitude Dice Roll - This was launched on August 1st, 2023.

This was partnership with local streamer WildWestDan, as we launched a high altitude d20 dice to generate donations. All proceeds went to the Boston Children's Hospital.

Weather Balloon 3 (WB 3) – Launched October 2nd, 2021, Sawyer Farm, Worthington, MA

Key features of WB3:

103,000 ft. apogee / burst altitude

New DragonTouch action cam for primary camera.

“Love Letter to Earth” theme.

3D printed, hand-painted Earth model.

Sensor Readings: Humidity, Temperature, Pressure, Altitude, CO2

Heating chamber for CO2 experiment

LoRa electronic cut-down system to separate payload from cord when stuck in a tree.

LoRa activated buzzer for helping to locate during recovery.

1000g balloon

PiCamera facing upwards to capture footage of the balloon and parachute

Yeast science experiment (successfully activated yeast after exposure to high altitude environment)

Chia seeds experiment (ongoing)

Scented putty experiment (lost some scent after high altitude exposure)

Bubble wrap experiment (large bubbles popped, small bubbles stayed intact)

Rubber band experiment (seemed undamaged/unaffected by cold/low-pressure)

Improved flight prediction, fill procedure, and balloon led to accurate landing 5 min from home.

WB3 Balloon Launch Video

Weather Balloon 2.5 (WB 2.5) – Launched June 24th, 2021, Cornwall, Pennsylvania

Because the payload box of WB 2 seemed to still be in pretty good shape, it was decided to fix up the sensors and fix the SD card issue and fly the payload again. The raspberry pi camera system was rebuilt as well to be more stable. This payload was successfully tracked and recovered. This time, there video footage and temperature sensor readings were successfully recorded onto the SD card. However, the Raspberry Pi mysteriously stopped recording near burst altitude. Latest theory is that the jolt from the burst knocked the SD card loose.

Weather Balloon Launch #2.5

Weather Balloon 1 (WB 1) – Launched November 28th, 2020, Agawam, Massachusetts

This was the first foray into the world of high altitude balloons. Neither a good quality GPS tracker nor a radio transmitter were used, so this balloon was never recovered. This payload flew with a homemade pi camera, programmed to save periodic still images every couple seconds.

Early Days

Photo Album: Click Here to View Photo Album