WB0SMX

We did a balloon launch at the Maricopa Hamfest just before Halloween this year. My job, as usual, was to ready the video payload, and track the balloon in order to get a live feed of the video from the balloon. I always pull out my tracking system and assemble it in the days before an event, to make sure that I have everything I need, and it is all working.  When I set everything up and did a full test run on Monday, everything worked fine. On the day of the flight, we set up the system as normal, and initial tests of moving the antennas up and down, and through their full range of motion indicated that we were ready to go. But when the balloon went up, Murphy hit.  My elevation rotor was not getting a good indication on either the meter of the control box, nor my tracking software.  This was intermittent, as sometimes toggling the controls seemed to make it work for a while.   I muddled through by manually controlling the antenna, sometimes needing to search for the balloon video dow