Chasing balloons

Yu Feng and his Guokr Makerlab team sent up a balloon in April to take pictures of China from above. Photo: Courtesy of Yu Feng

Before spring of this year, Yu Feng, 35, would never have guessed he'd be marveling at beautiful, satellite-quality, aerial photographs of the Earth he took himself.

Yu and his Guokr Makerlab team successfully launched a helium balloon 30,000 meters into the air in April. Their images have sparked interest in this DIY-version of aerial satellite photography, and adventure-seeking artists are hoping to live out an astronaut's fantasy.

Li Bin, a 41-year-old fan of radio technology and space exploration, has undertaken 13 projects to send off balloons since 2011, and runs a blog offering free assistance to those interested in aerial photography.

"Many people have asked me how to send up a balloon for aerial photography," Li said. "There have been up to five projects each year in China on aerial photography since 2011."

Early in 2011, Li first tried aerial photography himself by sending up a helium balloon in Beijing's suburbs, which reached a height of more than 14,000 meters before falling into the Bohai Sea near Dalian, Liaoning Province.

But people wanting to try aerial photography themselves may want to keep this in mind: The whole process, while not especially difficult, requires extensive preparation, math skills, background knowledge in meteorology and radio technology, and some cash. The average cost for a set of entry-level equipment is more than 700 yuan ($113), Li said.

"The major difficulty, though, is handling the helium gas container which weighs more than 50 kilograms," Li said. "It is a hard container to transport, even for us."

Yu said he and his team took one month to prepare their photo project. They carefully chose an appropriate place and date for the release, made predictions on the route their balloon would take and mapped out a feasible route on the ground for tracking it. They also had to create a box for their camera that could withstand low temperatures, low air pressure and radiation.

At around 8 pm on April 26, they released their balloon into the skies of Zhengxiangbai Qi, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. They had secured a GoPro camera inside the balloon's box that would stream video. Also attached to the balloon was a miniature version of the flying house in Disney's Up (2009) and a parachute.

Their next step, and perhaps the most important one, was to recover the camera.

"To chase the balloon, I drove 120 kilometers an hour and almost overturned because there were no roads in some places," Yu said. "Later, we came to a junction of grassland and desert where the car couldn't go any further, so we walked 6 kilometers to reach the balloon's expected landing point."

But when they arrived at their destination in the afternoon, more than 130 kilometers from their launch point, they could not find the red parachute or the box. After five hours of searching, they finally spotted a herdsman waving at them with the box in his hand.

"When you see those beautiful images from the video frames, you will certainly feel a strong sense of achievement," Yu said.

Wang Jiangmin, an aviation expert with the Hefei-based air information portal carnoc.com, warns that before embarking on these projects, people should get permission from the meteorological department, the aviation administration and the air force, a move that Yu and Li said they avoided because of what they deemed a complex process. According to the Regulations for General Aviation Flight Control, however, those who send off balloons without permissions could face fines up to more than 10,000 yuan.

"If the balloons are sent off without the permission of the aviation administration, it could cause potential danger to flights in the area," Wang said. "Though the procedures are complicated, ballooners should consider the entire picture, and do as the law says."