W6MRR-24 away.

Several of our recent launch’s have been troubled with tracker problems. The issue seems to be fake microcontrollers that don’t operate well in cold temperatures. The symptom was the tracker worked great on the ground but intermittent in the air. Using spray “Super Cold” located the the problem. A new batch of microcontrollers were used and the problem was fixed.

We launched a balloon on April 17th. It lit up later and the unexpectedly stopped reporting. Based on altitude I thought the one balloon had developed a flat. Robert K6RGG noticed it was sending the 18th. I was late turning on the WSPR to APRS gateway so only recent tracks are shown on APRS. It looks lit if has a pinhole leak in one balloon so it may not be up for long. Work continues on preparing cheap Chinese balloons and we are testing newer 32″ spherical balloons that should reach higher altitudes.

You can track it on APRS.fi and lu7aa.org with the complete path .