Possible Balloon Launch 26th May 11:30AM - Willunga, SA

[VK5QI]

Hi all,

It's looking likely there will be a high-altitude balloon launch on the 26th of May (Tuesday), launching around 11:30AM CST.
The launch is being conducted by some staff and students from the Willunga High School in Willunga, South Australia, launching from the school oval. I'm helping out with tracking and recovery.

This will be a regular up & down launch, reaching about 25km altitude.

There will be multiple tracking payloads flying, the primary being a 50 baud RTTY tracker, details below:

Primary Telemetry

• Frequency: 434.450MHz USB (+/- 2KHz or so)
• Telemetry: 50 baud 8N1 RTTY, callsign VK5ARG-1

As usual, use dl-fldigi for tracking, there is a guide available here: https://ukhas.org.uk/guides:tracking_guide

I'm also flying an experimental payload using a LoRa modem. This is going to be transmitting at around 300 baud, using the LoRa 'chirp' mode. This will be centered on 431.650MHz, with a 125KHz bandwidth. I've set up a remote ground station, which I'll be using along with a receiver in the main chase car. Unless you have the same hardware and software as my ground station you won't be able to decode it, but if anyone can see it on a SDR i'd be interested to know.

The current predictions have the payload landing somewhere near Coonalpyn, SA: http://predict.habhub.org/#!/uuid=9922c ... 46fea60134
As always, any assistance with tracking will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Mark

[VK5EI]

Hi Mark,

Great news to have a local balloon launch and students involved, well done.

Unfortunately I will be at work at that time but will leave the radio on for tracking.

Your experimental LoRa modem sounds interesting, hope it goes well.

Good luck

[VK5ZRL]

Well done Mark.
Last decode (RTTY) here was at 7475m with the balloon on the way down around 160km ESE of Adelaide.
Signal lost shortly after. Used a dual band (2m/70cm) vertical colinear antenna about 6m agl into an
Icom R7000 receiver.

$$$$$VK5ARG-1,884,05209:03,-35.643561,140.098892,7475,0,10,184,00*2884

[VK5TM]

Any word on how it all went?

It ended up not far from me but I was out all day, so only got to check the tracker at the beginning and after it ended.

[VK5QI]

All recovered, but it was certainly one hell of a recovery!

The balloon was underfilled, so ascended much slower than intended, and hence travelled much further.

As you would have seen, it landed in Ngarkat Conservation Park, and we had to 4WD in then hike to recover the payload.

There are some maps and pictures and things here: http://rfhead.net/willunga/

A big thanks to VK5ZRL, who was uploading to the online tracker for most of the flight. We had issues with flutter while travelling below the payload.

[VK5EI]

Fantastic effort Mark to you and your team, it must have been a tuff hike and lots of fox hunting skills.

Thanks for sharing the pictures, the look on the kids faces are very pleasing.

I did set up the radio to track, but failed to switch off the squelch tab, and possibly had the incorrect shift rate

Had the auto image screen capture running so managed to get something.

well done

[VK5TM]

Add my congratulations to the list.

I noticed there was one YL who seemed to take a particular interest in the proceedings.

[VK2XTC]

You have done really well and got some nice pictures.
I went through the lot and think the following is rather good.

Not a bad outcome at all really ...




Regards

Brian

VK2XTC

[VK1KW]

Well Done!
Footprint almost got to the ACT all but another few Km in height.
Great to see it recovered and no one lost in the scrub on a very dark night.