Martin Rothfield W6MRR

Supercon Lauch Update 11/6/22

For some reason W6MRR-26 woke up today, but not yesterday. See the AMSAT Argentina site or APRS. So the trasnmitter is wonky but the altitude is looking good – 43K’. W3HAC also woke up today as it did yesterday but appears to by sitting on the ground in DM36II land. Stay tuned!

SF-HAB Launch @ HackaDay Superconference

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”

New Trackers Underway

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”

W6MRR-25 Away

Peter W6DEI and I launched a new fangled Yokohama balloon with a standard tracker. The balloon had been stretched to 100″ diameter. You can track it here

Picoballoon Launch Sunday 6/18 9 AM

We will be meeting by the Berkeley Marina – https://maps.app.goo.gl/erjqu1VxkXkdZtqg6 We will be sending the same tracker with a new Yokohama balloon. It will be sending as W6MRR on 20 m WSPR. If it lights up it will be W6MRR-25 on APRS.

New Tracker Underway

Kazu AG6NS ran out of space for more things like 2 m APRS and 20 m data over SSTV. I had tried a dual 2 m/20 m tracker before but gave up due to self interference. I was using a 6 g 0.5 W FM VHF transmitter module and it caused the ATMega1284 to lockContinue reading “New Tracker Underway”

Useful Pico ballooning Tips

Dave VE3KCL is the big dog of pico ballooning. He has done an huge number of fascinating experiments with amazing results (most of the time). Stretching Chinese Balloons Some notes about flying clear Chinese balloons with the U4B transmitter

Kazu AG6NS is Developing 2 m APRS

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.”