Author Archives: Martin Rothfield W6MRR

The mighty flight of K6RGG-13

We tried a new style balloon – a 32′ spherical balloon composed of two plastics. Robert K6RGG and I attempted to launch, but the prepared balloon got away.  I had a micro-swivel between the balloon and the upper dipole. The top of the string came back with a knot so the cheap Chinese swivel must have failedContinue reading “The mighty flight of K6RGG-13”

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 usedContinue reading “W6MRR-24 away.”

Pico Balloon SSTV on 20 m – First Light

Last Sunday Kazu AG6NS and I tried putting up a tethered pico balloon up flying Kazu’s SSTV code on a ESP-32. It was sending “Martin-1” mode SSTV directly modulating a Si5351 clock generator chip. Due to slow but steady light winds it spent most of the time flying horizontally. We will have something ready toContinue reading “Pico Balloon SSTV on 20 m – First Light”

W6MRR-23 Lights Up for Second Day

After a series of failures to send after launching, there seems to be an intermittent problem with the same tracker. It is alternating on 20 and 40 m, with most of the 40 m transmission lost. We test on the ground prior to launch and never have problems. It may be temperature related problem dueContinue reading “W6MRR-23 Lights Up for Second Day”