Mark VK5QI is planning to launch a couple of ‘medium’ altitude balloons this week as test flights of a new LoRa based flight termination controller. The first is tomorrow Tuesday (29th), and one possibly on Saturday (2nd Jan). Both will be launched from the Mt Barker High School Oval, and will only have a maximum altitude of 15km or so.

Testing new Command Systems

The primary aims for these launches are:

• Test the LoRa RF link.
• Test some new uplink & message-digi-peating features of the payload.
• Test a new cut-down mechanism (something with a little more ‘bang’ than before.

LoRa payloads have flown on the last few Horus launches, as a lead up to the retirement of the current ‘Osiris’ cutdown payload, which uses a now-obsolete FSK modem-on-a-chip. The new LoRa payloads have the potential to provide a more reliable uplink using far less power. The downside is that specialised receiver hardware is required (well, as specialised as a module you can buy on eBay for $10 is) . As such, it’ll only be used on the cutdown payload, where the only people really interested in it are those of us in the chase cars who are trying to recover all the shiny cameras hanging beneath the balloon!

Where to Listen?

Both launches will be at 10:30AM CDT, and will have the following payloads attached:

• RTTY Telemetry: 434.450MHz, 100 baud 7N2 (Use dl-fldigi to decode this as usual)
• LoRa Payload: 431.650MHz, 125KHz bandwidth, 4/8 Coding Rate, SF10

As always, trackers are appreciated. The flights will be able to monitored via www.habhub.org