Category Archives: Uncategorized

These tend not to be the electronics but from not understanding the balloons and how they work. So, the first part of this presentation is to build awareness of what the mistakes might be. If you release a balloon and you had an error is how you prepared and planned the launch, the balloon willContinue reading “General Description of the preparation of a balloon”

It is important to know the volume of a balloon in order to run the calculations in the spreadsheet float1g. That spreadsheet does all the math for you and you need to know the payload weight, the balloon weight, the free lift and the volume of the balloon. The weight of the balloon and theContinue reading “Altitude, superpressure and Volume Calculations”

There are a few surprising things about hydrogen and helium and a few obvious ones. This assumes you will use a cylinder from a welding supply store. The hose for filling can be anything. I use the acetylene line and torch head of an old welding set as it has valves and is handy. TheContinue reading “On the use of hydrogen and helium”

The balloons available that can circumnavigate the world are limited. The regular party balloons are unlikely to succeed. The balloon needs to be at least a reasonable volume to lift a payload to a desired altitude and not so big that the pressures at float burst the balloon. Most amateurs choose one of these twoContinue reading “General discussion on balloons”

There is a great interest in building a beacon at the absolute minimum weight. This makes sense as the less the weight, the higher the balloon will float and the more likely it will be above the weather. If the beacon is made too fragile, then the likelyhood of failure increases. It is a judgementContinue reading “Considerations about weight in balloons”

The clear balloons from AliExpress are the most economical way to fly superpressure balloons. They cost in the range of $1.50 each and two are required. They have survived at least 9 complete circumnavigations of the earth. They float a little lower than the SBS-13 so they are a bit more likely to run intoContinue reading “Preparation of the clear chinese balloons”

We will be sending balloons from the Berkeley Marina There is a bug in the software so it is sending on 20/30 m on alternate transmissions. I am testing with just a short wire and am receiving it fine so it will be interesting how it does with a 20 dipole. Tune in for K6RGGContinue reading “Launch on Thursday @ 11:30 AM and Saturday  @ 9 AM”

Robert K6RGG and I launched a pico balloon from the Berkeley Marina at noon, Monday September 20. It didn’t start sending so I gave up. I was alerted to beacons received on September 22 over the Pacific in grid square CL20. It was received by the amazing KFS receiver. It was and continues to reportContinue reading “Where is W6MRR-19?”

Last transmission at 2021-09-19 05:22 UTC.  It seems to be sitting on the ground in Turkmenistan and a packet was received in Finland.