PS-30 PICO balloon HF payload

[VK3YT]

Hi all,

FYI,

PS-30 is scheduled for 8am Sat 27 Dec 2014.

- Solar powered, 25mW TX
- WSPR on 30m (dial 10.138700Mhz) and 20m (dial 14.095600Mhz)
- JT9 on 10.142000Mhz and 14.075000Mhz centre (dial 10.141000Mhz and 14.074000Mhz);

SNUS http://spacenear.us/tracker/?filter=PS-30
WSPR http://wsprnet.org/olddb?mode=html&band ... &sort=grid

TX time and frequency schedule as previously, ie.

0 30m // Mandatory JT9 and WSPR, two per hour
6 30m // Optional JT9 - bat full
10 20m // Optional JT9 and WSPR - batt low
16 20m // Optional JT9 - bat full
20 30m // Optional JT9 and WSPR - batt low
26 30m // Optional JT9 - bat full
30 20m // Mandatory JT9 and WSPR, two per hour
36 20m // Optional JT9 - bat full
40 30m // optional JT9 and WSPR - batt low
46 30m // Optional JT9 - bat full
50 20m // Optional JT9 and WSPR - batt low

Prediction


Assistance with tracking is appreciated.

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year, and hope to see you call sign on SNUS this Sat.

Regards,
Andy

[VK2FAK]

Hi all....

Ok Andy...will be keeping an eye out for it....


Merry Christmas to you, and everyone here on forum...

[VK5EI]

PS-30 progressing well, currently at +8500m over NZ south Island. Not having much luck receiving any of the telemetry here conditions have not been good. However ZL1RS and VK4RV have been doing a great job receiving and uploading the data.

[VK3KCX]

Still heading South Andy, If this keeps up pretty soon it will be in the sun all day.
Good work Adrian and Bob, I just can't seem to here it down hear in Melbourne.

[ZL1RS]

This one has been a real eye opener after a slow start. The balloon safely negotiated the "Melbourne Triangle" (southern version of the Bermuda Triangle which has "consumed" a few of the earlier balloons!), and crossed the Tasman Sea. As it approached the Fiordland area of the South Island it caught some atmospheric 'pressure waves' from the air flow meeting the land mass which cause some big excursions in the altitude ... and equally big excursions in the blood pressure of the trackers! After passing over the south western corner of ZL the balloon turned well south down to below -50 degrees latitude (south east of ZL9) and the altitude stabilised at around the 9000m again. Andy believes this is the southern-most path of any Amateur Radio payload balloon to date worldwide. It is now curving back toward the east but still tracking SE and moving closer to Antarctica. The projected flight path http://ready.arl.noaa.gov/hypubout/148530_trj001.gif has it moving back up towards the Pacific but still staying fairly well south as it progresses towards South America ... will it get there?!

At one point I was just about to tear the station apart to find why relatively strong traces of the JT9 telemetry were not decoding for extended periods of time when we realised that these periods coincided with reports of local and intercontinental 6m propagation via Es. Close examination of the waterfall showed the JT9 tones had a horizontal smear to varying degrees, but only very slight smear when there was no Es about (and the telemetry decodes were good). We put it down to either Doppler shift on the signal via the E layer and/or multi-path propagation from the E layer and the F2 layer. I assume the E layer will sustain reflections/refractions of a 14MHz signal, the path distance from the balloon to here has been within 1 hop for the Es layer.

Propagation in general has been down. No long distance WSPR spots ... quite a contrast from the flights just a month ago.

I'm now running a double receive system to get the JT9 telemetry ... one radio is using a wire Vee Beam antenna with 55m long legs, and the other radio is using a 20m dipole. Getting two instances of the special version of WSJTX running separately on one computer was an interesting little IT exercise. The two antennas are about 50m apart and the fading characteristics are sometimes similar, and sometimes different. Sometimes one of the blocks in the telemetry pair will decode and the other will not and visa versa on the other antenna (or from another station), and Andy has the ability to "stitch together" these blocks to provide a complete pair to update the tracking web site. http://tracker.habhub.org/ ... and select PS-30 from the list on the left.

Andy has done a great job with this HF 'payload' sorting out the unstable GPS that plagued earlier flights and finding a better quality 'party balloon' that is now in it's 4th day of flight ... and long may it continue. Having the HF tracking (either by JT9 as displayed on the habhub link above, or the mapping at http://wsprnet.org/drupal/wsprnet/map) to follow the flight across our vast expanses of open ocean is far more interesting that snippets of APRS from a VHF or UHF transmitter as the balloon passes populated areas.

73,

[VK2FAK]

Hi all...

This Balloon is completing it's 6th day of flight....and heading for South America..

[VK4KL]

Hope it makes it all the way back

Adrian

[VK3YT]

Current location

Prediction


Big thanks to the hard core trackers that help with tracking, none of these would be possible without you!

[VK3KCX]

Great to see that LU5FF has reported the balloon!

- David

[VK2PR]

Did the balloon come down? Just checked the habhub site and it's gone.

[VK3MIX]

Shows up as received as of 11 minutes ago at the moment.

[ZL1RS]

Try this link instead ... http://spacenear.us/tracker/fullscreen.php?filter=PS-30

[VK3YT]

And there is a Pebble Watch Apps for tracking
http://picospace.net/?p=590

[VK3KCX]

Hi Andy, is there and endurance record for foil balloons?

- David

[VK3YT]

Not sure David,
The UK guys had some custom envelopes a few months ago that stayed up for a few weeks, but I haven't seen anything for standard party balloon.
Regards,
Andy

[VK4KL]

is the balloon still up?

Adrian

[VK2FAK]

Hi all....

The Balloon has not been heard for a day or so.....there was no indication the Balloon was dropping, Altitude was still stable... The strong winds going over South America may have done some damage as the Balloon was up to speeds like 216 Kmh.....so based on all this, Andy has decided to declare the Balloon MIA... pending any further contact...

[VK3YT]

Sorry it was a bit too early to call PS-30 MIA, balloon is back. Last received by ZS6KN at 06:50UTC 10 Jan.

[VK4KL]

Monitoring just in case

Adrian

[VK2FAK]

Hi all..

The Balloon is still up....some JT9 decodes a short time ago.....ZS6KN just can't get both the 1st and 2nd Packets...