HAB launch 18/1/14 @3:30 local time.

[VK3BQ]

Just received this email.
--------

Hi,

Our high altitude balloon launches are going ahead this weekend, with slightly changed configuration.

The details:

Saturday 18/1 3:30pm AEST: SSDV imaging payload, 434.650Mhz USB, RTTY 450Hz shift, 300 baud, ASCII 8 bit No parity 1 Stop bit

Sunday 19/1 3:30pm AEST: HF and UHF payload.

* 434.075Mhz telemetry with RTTY on USB, 425Hz shift, 100 baud, ASCII 8bit No parity 1 stop bit, alternating with KickSat spread spectrum (64kbps MSK with with 511 bit Gold sequences).

* HF telemetry on 30m and 20m bands, with THOR4, JT65 and WSPR in alternating time slots. There will be RSID bursts to enable THOR4 auto detection in fldigi.

Balloon positions will be uploaded to http://spacenear.us/tracker
SSDV images will be available at http://ssdv.habhub.org, or on dl-fldigi if you receive SSDV directly.

On the day we will be in #PSB IRC chat room on freenode.net
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=PSB

Dl-fldigi can be used to decode THOR4 and RTTY/SSDV.
JT65 and WSPR requires their own softwares
http://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/wsjtx.html and http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/wspr.html


As usual, assistance with tracking is greatly appreciated!

Regards
Andy VK3YT.
======================================================

HF transmission schedule (timeslots are minutes in the hour). basically these are blocks of 10 minutes, with the first 6 for THOR4, next two for JT65 and last two for WSPR.




RSID auto detect: Enable RxID button on fldigi. The protocol and centre frequency will be automatically detected from RSID bursts.




Path prediction:

[VK3KCX]

Thanks for implementing the RSID – this will be a big help and also attract the attention of other persons who are not following the mission.
- David VK3KCX

[VK2FAK]

Hi all...

Seems like this Balloon is crashing, dropped about 800m and still dropping..

I don't understand why its rate of climb was so slow....it only managed 10830m in all of 5hrs..am I wrong or would you expect a faster climb....it was still rising when problems occurred though so who knows..

John

[VK5TX]

Any photos of the payload?

Ben

[VK5EI]

I give full support to these group of guys giving it a go, thats what amateur radio is all about. They have my full support

http://projectspaceballoon.net/

[VK2FAK]

Hi all

Of course the team gets full support.....my question in another thread on here is simply looking for some details of what happen.....the only thing I am critical about is the lack of info....other than that...like everyone else...I try to participate and send in data captures....not aways easy...

John

[VK5EI]

G'day John,

Its been a big two long days for the guys and I am sure plenty of info will come later.

We always have challanges with our hobbies and one of the bonuses we gain is acheivement. Its a bit like fishing

I failed today to decode any hf telemetry due to high noise level and poor conditions, but from what I understand their little transmitter was decoded in the U.S.

If you would like to keep posted with the PSB action group send them an email and they will add you to the update list.

cheers
VK5EI - Joe

[VK3KCX]

Good work guys, I was not able to RX any of the UHF downlink this time, however I got just about all of the Thor after I gave up on FLDigi and changed to HRD/DM780 - but then I could not upload the spots to the spacenear server. Don't know just what was going on with the FLD and Thor, just would not go, anybody else have this problem?

- David VK3KCX

[VK2OMD]

Re Sunday:

I did not bother to look at the HF sigs, I had observed them on a previous mission and noted that the THOR4 sentences were often fairly complete to the eye (eg lat, lon similiar from one sentence to the next), but very few passed the frame check. That suggested to me that the frame was way to long for the channel error rate and the probability of decode was very low. Though THOR4 was probably chosen for weak signal performance, in my experience it didn't perform on relatively strong signals with fading and interference.

I saw people pasting THOR4 telemetry into the IRC channel for manual upload, presumably because they had failed to automatically upload, and that would happen if the frame check fails.

The UHF transmitter was apparently only intended to last a few hours, but it looks like it failed in less than two hours, so I never got to hear it.

However, as far as I can gather, the UHF transmission was primarily SS with a single RTTY telemetry sentence every 2min for approx 15s. The RTTY transmission was not syncronised UTC, so I expect you would not know just when it would appear, you would need to very quickly focus fldigi or whatever on it, and hope to decode. I expect AFC, though a boon on a drifting transmitter, would be ineffective because of the nearly 2min gap between transmissions. As I said, I didn't hear it, but I wonder if it required highly intensive monitoring to get good packet decode rates.

Most of these issues can be resolved with trials of alternatives using a ground based transmitter!

Owen

[VK3YT]

Hi Guys,

After reading through the forum I realised that I should have joined this forum earlier. I did try but totally missed the obvious rules, and didn't get approved, and haven't tried again until now. I never knew most of the people interested in and/or helped with the tracking were actually all here in this forum.

The support we have received from you all has been amazing. And we have been adapting ourselves to share the experience with you. In the early day, it was like "We can't find the balloon, need help to track it down". Now it is like "Let's do something fun, and get everyone involved". It shows from our records, more than 50% of our payloads were not recovered, intentionally, to maximise the floating time in the air.

For some background, we only got into the hobby at the end of 2012, motivated by the Horus guys launching HORUS-26 with the repeater for the WIA AGM in the middle of the year. There were so much to learn, from rules and regulations, to launching balloons, designing payloads, implementing protocols. It has been an interesting experience, and we don't pretend to really know everything we are doing . Sometime you just have to try things out.

THOR4 was a last minute addition recommended by Mark VK5QI from Horus. DominoEX was the initial choice, but the FEC from THOR was attractive. From the direct feedbacks we received it was a reasonable compromise between implementation limitation and FLdigi automation. Owen stated the short-comings of THOR4 very accurately in his posts. There is always room to improve, and that is what we are here for.

To answer a few questions I saw in the thread, power of the UHF TX was 25mW on Sat, and 9mW on Sun. HF power was 40mW. The balloon on Sat was rising very slowly intentionally to achieve at least 5H of air time.

I know there has been a lack of information for our parts, and will try to improve on this. Last weekend launch was actually plan-B, the initial plan was to attempt our altitude record in Southern NSW which preparation was done from last year. Things didn't work out, people couldn't make it, and a whole new setup was required less than a week before the date. It was a mad rush, and with the 45+ temperature during the week, many people didn't think we were going to make it. No excuses, just to point out that it was a challenging week for us!

Thanks again for your support, and see you at the next launch!

Regards
Andy VK3YT

[VK2FAK]

Hi all....

Hi Andy good to see you made it here....

" no excuses" you said at the end, mate you don't need excuses, what happens, happens, its all part of the experiment..

I was actually thinking on the day, what is the heat going to do to the Balloons..

Now that your looking at results and such, how did that new mode go....did anyone decode that....and for that matter did you use it...?

John

[VK3YT]

Hi John,

I didn't have much time for the spread-spectrum mode, had some packets at low altitude but the plan was to track from Melbourne later on. That was when the transmitter failed I didn't have any reports from anyone that tracked it.

Andy

[VK3BQ]

Sorry Andy. I'm busy working at the tennis. (Silly paid employment) and wasn't able to track this time. I did send it the info to a couple of clubs and hopefully others had a chance to capture some data for you. Glad you finally made it to the forum.

[VK3YT]

Hi Andrew,
Many people mentioned they first heard about the releases from you, so thanks for that.
I should be able to give your club members a demo of a real HAB release (a really small one!) if they are still interested.
Andy

[VK3BQ]

Yes. We have you pencilled in for march 7th or 21st if still available at emdrc.