From Amateur Radio Victoria, original post here:

The foil party-type pico balloon launcher Andy Nguyen VK3YT could not resist the opportunity during a work assignment on the USA west coast to float a few balloons.

Working for a month at San Jose, the out-of-sequence balloon PS-54 with a solar power APRS payload feeding a 25 mW transmitter, went up last Saturday to test the local environment.

In doing so, Andy VK3YT is the first to launch such balloons in both the southern and northern hemispheres.

A tracker network of stations followed one that had earlier circled the earth, and then they tracked another balloon as it did two circumnavigations.

Andy VK3YT described his debut flight as “zooming right past the San Francisco Golden Bridge at 8000m, and spent a whole day bouncing along the west coast of California, right next to some other local up and down balloon launches.

“The weather was a bit too rough. The tiny balloon took a few dives before gaining altitude again at sunset, then went silent again thought possibly due to antenna damage from the beating it took during the day.”

However, good news came when PS-54 popped up again after floating three days later. By this time it had travelled 1800 km, probably doing a loop over the Pacific Ocean out of range, then floating via Los Angeles to Arizona state to the east.

By chance it passed right above Andy while he was driving around LA – what a small world. This northern hemisphere APRS-only maiden flight was followed by another.

PS-53 was released on Sunday September 13 with a payload this time with WSPR and JT9 on HF. It was tracked during a period of good propagation by ZL, VK and local US stations (including VK4RV, VK5BC, ZL1RS, W3BH, WB7ABP, AK4AT, WX4F & K4COD).

On leaving San Jose it went north to Sacramento, then east across the border to Nevada clocking up 725 km, but seemed to have been lost in desert country due to due to envelope failure.

His exploits and expertise have captured the imaginations of many US trackers, who mainly follow latex weather-type balloons until they burst and crash to ground.

*** APRS PS-54 LAST HEARD 22 HOURS AGO AS OF THE TIME OF THIS POST ***
APRS Track here, flight info here.

*** HF WSPR PS-53 DID CRASH SEPTEMBER 14 DUE TO ENVELOPE FAILURE ***
Flight info here, WSPR data here.