As per the previous announcements on the AREG website, there will be a (small) balloon launch occurring this weekend. The current predictions for Sunday have the payloads landing to the south-east of Mannum (hopefully not in the river!).
Currently the prediction for Sunday looks the best in terms of recovery/distance/bakery factor, and also leaves Saturday free for some last-minute preparations! As usual, we’ll aim to launch around 10AM CDST, with the launch being conducted from the Mt Barker High School Oval.
This will be a fairly low-key launch, with a tiny balloon and tiny payloads, but visitors are still welcome! We’ll be on-site from around 9-9:30AM, and should have an ear out on VK5RSB 70cm.
The current prediction (noting this will probably change between now and Sunday!!) has us landing near Palmer just after 11AM – a very short flight! We’re using a 100g Totex balloon, so the expected burst altitude is only 11-12km.
UPDATE: We will now be using a 1000g Hwoyee balloon, but with a minimal amount of helium. Depending on what ascent rate we achieve, we may terminate the flight early for a landing near Mannum, or let it ascend to a potential height of 35km. Either way, the landing area is in the Mannum area.
Telemetry Information
The telemetry frequencies for the flight are as follows:
- RTTY – ‘HORUS’ – 434.650 MHz (100 baud, 425 Hz Shift, 7N2)
- THOR16 – ‘THORUS’ – 434.640 MHz
Both payloads are running 10mW transmit power, and have essentially identical antennas.
DL-FLDIgi Setup for THOR16
As usual, use dl-fldigi to decode telemetry, but in the case of the THOR16 payload, you will have to manually select the operating mode from the drop-down list as follows:
The auto-configure capability for the RTTY payload (‘HORUS’) will work as usual, however you will have to manually select ‘HORUS’ from the payload drop-down list. Auto-configure will not work for the THOR16 payload.
If you have the capability of running two 70cm receivers, please consider running two instances of dl-fldigi to decode both payloads. This may require either multiple PCs, or multiple sound cards. If you can only run a single receiver, please try and alternate between the different telemetry payloads.
We would very much appreciate reports as to your experiences decoding the different telemetry payloads – please e-mail these through to vk5qi@rfhead.net
Tracking for the launch will be available on the HabHub online tracker. We hope to see you as part of the tracking nets!
Images and comments from the chase will be sent via Twitter, using the #horus48 hashtag.
73 de Mark VK5QI