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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”

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.

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”

For a launch The time and place to launch your picoballoon is important. Things to consider are location, surface wind, cloud cover, the path the balloon will follow during ascent and the path it will follow one at float altitude. Consider the things that can go wrong. The balloon can drag across the ground, snagContinue reading “Choosing the time and place”

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”

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.”

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”