Mount Lilydale Mercy College balloon launch

[VK3YT]

Hi all,

Mount Lilydale Mercy College will be launching a balloon from Lake Bolac Victoria at 8am 17/10/19, with science payloads from students.

This is their first launch, so it would be great if we can assist them with the tracking.

They will be using APRS trackers on 145.175 (VK3HAX and VK3HAX-15), and UHF tracker on 434.650.

UHF details:

Olivia 8/250 with RSID on 434.649Mhz USB (Dial frequency), call sign MLMC01.

Tracking at tracker.habhub.org

Expected altitude ~30km


73,
Andy VK3YT

[VK3RX]

Thanks Andy. I can hear the beacon on 145.175 loud & clear on a discone north of Melbourne.

[VK3YT]

It turned out to be a straight forward flight, they started around 8:20am and recovered the payload at around 10:30am at Enfield, just missed the Enfield State Park! Actual max altitude was 28624m.

APRS tracking was good all the way down to 1559m, and they could lock in the Olivia UHF signal on the ground when they got there.

Sorry for the late notice, but they were not sure of the launch time until the last minute because of the weather and wind direction.

Thanks everyone for keeping a look-out for them. Hopefully we will get more advanced warning next time (I am sure they are hooked now!)