As a part of the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP), the Nebraska team continues to test the equipment we will be using to stream live video during the next two solar eclipses.

We decided to do a tethered balloon test as a step beyond bench testing equipment and not quite to a full flight including release and recovery of the payloads.

The weather was warm and clear with just a little breeze.

We used a large balloon left over from the 2017 Eclipse Ballooning project. It was valuable to the team to practice balloon filling techniques in an unhurried environment.

We had a reel used for fishing to tether the balloon. It was extended about 100 ft. into the air for our testing purposes.

Walking the balloon out.

The vent open and close commands were successful and we had a successful cut down.

The website that pulls the coordinates from our GPS payload was not functioning, so our base station did not automatically track the payloads.

We had our new grid antenna set up, but have yet to test the RFD900 payload connection and software.

As the payloads dropped from about 80 ft. the parachute did not fully deploy and the 3D printed vent was damaged as well as some parts of the styrofoam payload boxes. We will need to fix those before our actual test flight.