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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”

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”