Does anyone on HN now have much experience with weather balloons? How much preparation do you need to do to launch? I assume you'd have to inform the relevant authorities, has that process become more onerous after the Chinese balloon incident? What is a launch like? How long after launch do you get usable data?
Edited to add: a flagged comment mentioned GitHub. I guess I always think of Git first, and "hub" barely registers. Pornhub somehow is the opposite for me. It may have been intended as an insult, but that comment made me think, thank you random Internet person.
I think I saw the story about pornhub and Texas on HN before I made that comment. So it was somewhat fresh in my mind.
There are a lot more SOMETHINGhub sites that are not-porn (ex: scihub, github) than the one pornhub site.
But radiosondes and balloons come under an exemption, so can be flown pretty much anywhere. I think the exemption allows up to 2kg payloads. Radiosondes (the new Vaisala ones) are around 120g, and it's pretty cool technology.
if you're going to launch any kind of something >400', you should do the responsible thing and contact ATC. if they say you're fine and no further contact, then great. they'll ask the size of your balloon, the size of the payload, the expected altitude, expected flight duration, and if you have any radio beacons they can listen to, and similar question. they didn't even ask me my purpose. it's a really simple phone call to make. the last thing you want to see happen is some sort of incident involving your balloon.
https://www.vaisala.com/en/products/weather-environmental-se...
YouTube teardown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ikRJMeSUTI
https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/upperair/skew-t-log-p-diagram...
I think that's what i find most useful from the balloons
