Some of last weeks launches and the morning launch on Sunday, Isabel and I noticed that the weather balloons looked to be getting a little bigger in size. They gradually grew in size and got bigger with time. Not every balloon was getting too big during this time period. The regulator and flowmeter were inspected to make sure everything was working correctly. We were filling the balloons slower and slower and sometimes still getting a large balloon size. The launch on Saturday evening and Sunday morning we noticed the balloon getting much bigger then normal.
The regulator seems to be working fine and so does the flowmeter (from watching the gauges) but we believe that even though the gauges on the flowmeter are showing the correct amount of helium going into the balloon, this is not the case. We changed to the other flowmeter and regulator and have had normal size balloons so far.
Below is a picture of the last launch we did with the bad flowmeter on Sunday morning. Tests were being done each launch to try and figure out what the problem could be.
