Author Archives: Martin Rothfield W6MRR

Help combat the fake Chinese spy balloon gap threat – join SF-HAB!

HabHub has been provided by Anthony Strik since 2011 – thanks Anthony! The HabHub Tracker, Predictor and Curst Calculator are now located on SondeHub. Thanks to Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) for supporting SondeHub! https://github.com/projecthorus/sondehub-amateur-tracker/wiki/Guide-for-HabHub-Users

Beau, K6EAURikke, KN6KZFSteve, K6WW Bio: Beau, Rikke, and Steve will share their experiences and antics of chasing WX balloons. There are thousands of balloons launched twice a day, at the same time, from sites all over the world, carrying radiosondes to capture and transmit weather data to ground stations. During their roughly two-hour flight, theirContinue reading “Falling from the Sky: Chasing WX Balloon Transmitters”

Most latex balloons are used to rapidly ascend to burst altitude and land gracefully with a parachute (aka burster, pop & drop, etc.) We tried something different. Last Sunday we tried a latex balloon for a high altitude float: K6RGG-14. It was a 100g Hwoyee with 5 g of net lift. The payload was 20Continue reading “Our First Latex Floater”

It didn’t happen if there aren’t pix, so: The W3HAC balloon flatted out overnight but is still beaconing from somewhere in DM36, which is a large area to search. W6MRR-26 was last reported over Algeria at ~42 K feet.

We will meet prior to HackaDay’s Supercon on Sunday, November 6 at 9 am in front of the the Los Angeles College of Music, 14 East Del Mar Blvd, Pasadena 91105 If all goes well you can track it on 20 m WSPR,  WSPRnet.org or some of the alternate sites listed on WSPRnet as  W6MRR &Continue reading “SF-HAB Launch @ HackaDay Superconference”

Kazu AG6NS and I have been working on a couple of trackers. One is a dual band 2/20 m APRS/WSPR with other modes coming. It is based on an ATMega1284 processor, which is a 328 (used currently) with more memory and and running at 10 MHz, the safe limit for 3.3 V operation. Kazu hasContinue reading “New Trackers Underway”