Onward and Upward with Paul Verhage, Your Near Space Guide

Forrest M. Mims III

The best hobby electronics magazine in the business is Nuts and Volts, and its best science columnist is L. Paul Verhage. Paul concludes his columns in Nuts and Volts with "Onwards and Upwards," a fitting way to sign off columns about flying science experiments to the edge of space using high-altitude balloons.

Paul has agreed to write a new column for The Citizen Scientist about his near space experiments using high-altitude balloons. The first installment of "The Poorman's Space Program" appears in this installment of TCS.

Paul Verhage smiles after the successful recovery of one of his near spacecraft that was carried to the edge of space by a high-altitude balloon in July 2006. Photograph by Roger Hammond of the Central Nebraska Near Space Program.

Paul's new column will provide readers with the basic training necessary to conduct high-altitude scientific balloon flights. This is an opportunity to do real science, for atmospheric scientists have a serious interest in new findings about conditions between the surface and the upper atmosphere. In addition to conventional science using various sensors, Paul will also describe flights in which a camera was carried to the edge of space while suspended from a balloon. You can see one of his high-altitude photographs made from a balloon in his opening column.

After getting his BS in physics with minors in mathematics and aerospace studies, Paul was commissioned into the US Air Force, where he spent 7-1/2 years at various bases around the country. While he was stationed at the Pentagon, he became an amateur radio operator with the call sign KD4STH. After the Air Force, Paul returned to college to earned a MS in education and a teaching certificate.

Paul writes that he was introduced to the poor man's space program in October 1994 at a monthly amateur radio club meeting. "Over the next two years I experimented with packet radio and microcontrollers. I designed and sewed a parachute and made my first near spacecraft airframe, the Isaac Asimov. The flight computer was designed on graph paper and transferred to bare copper circuit board with the heat transfer method. The printed circuit board was not very high quality and needed a lot of work to make it function properly. The first launch was on a cold winter morning in November. The mission reached an altitude of 90,200 feet and landed 166 miles away. Because of an oversight, my chase crew lost contact with the Isaac Asimov. Contact with the near spacecraft was intermittent through the rest of the flight and we spent several hours trying to locate it once it landed. The launch preparations began at 6:00 AM and we didn't get home until 10:00 PM. Many of the experiments didn't work properly and we nearly lost the near spacecraft. But the Geiger counter data was spectacular and I learned a lot with it. I spent hours in the public library trying to locate the pictures taken by the Isaac Asimov."

Paul went on to write, "What appeals most to me about the poor man's space program is that it combines GPS, microcontrollers, space exploration, and digital radio. When something goes wrong during a mission (say an experiment doesn't perform properly), it's not a failure; it's a justification to launch another balloon with a redesigned experiment."

Paul finances his near space activities by teaching electronics to Idaho high school students in Boise. I look forward to seeing his teaching in the The Citizen Scientist, and I hope readers will become involved in his research and spread the word. There's lots of science just waiting to happen in Paul Verhage's world of near space ballooning.

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