Flight 103 through 111: These flights were released in January and February, 1949 from Alamogordo, New Mexico to test the action of the combined ballast controls (displacement switch and rate-of-ascent switch). Receiving units were stationed at Alamogordo; at Miami, Oklahoma and at Nashville, Tennessee; aircraft were used both to receive the signal and also to track and position the balloon by the use of the radio compass.
For the first time on these flights, a program switch was used to permit a single transmitter to transmit three temperature signals as well as ballastflow data and pressure information. By interrupting the pressure and ballast data for short intervals of temperature data, all of this information was telemetered with the AM-1 (N.Y.U.) transmitter.
Aircraft reception of 500 miles was reported on these flights, but ground reception was limited to about 250 miles, perhaps due to mountains surrounding the receiving station.
No significant data was obtained on four of these flights, and on two more the principal objective of the flight was defeated by the excessive gas loss from the balloons.
From the height-time curves of Flights 103 and 107 (Figures 50 and 51) may be seen that even with constant ballast flow (at 2400 grams per hour)
Figure 50