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Horus 74 Flight Report

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Horus 74 was launched on the 30th of August 2026, and was the long awaited re-flight of our popular cross-band amateur radio repeater! We last flew this in December 2024 with great success, and while we had intended to fly it in 2025, a launch failure kept it on the ground.

This flight also had a Wenet imagery payload trialling a new high-quality camera module, and a MeshCore payload experiment, aiming to relay text messages between South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales.

This flight reached an altitude of 35210m, and was recovered in a paddock north of Karoonda. All the payloads performed well, with many contacts on the crossband repeater, amazing photos from the Wenet payload, and packets relayed interstate via MeshCore!

Launch, Chase & Recovery

Weather at the Mt Barker launch site was pretty much perfect. Clear skies, lots of helping hands and almost no wind made filling the Hwoyee 1600g balloon easy. It was great to see a few new faces at the launch site too!

The launch itself headed almost straight up, with the flight hovering around the Mt Barker area for quite some time, resulting in some excellent photos, as seen later in this post.

Horus 74 Launch!

Just after launch the cross-band repeater came into range of net control VK5ARG (run by Grant VK5GR), and the contacts begun. We also started to see some excellent imagery from the Wenet camera, with some great photos of Adelaide captured not long after launch.

The chase teams (Liam VK5ALG, Mark VK5QI, Will VK5AHV and Peter VK5APR) headed off towards Karoonda to recover the payload. The burst altitude was expected to be around 32km, but the Hwoyee balloon outperformed like normal and ended up bursting at 35210m. The descent rate was quite high on the way down, giving the teams some concern – this ended up being due to almost half of the balloon latex getting tangled up in the parachute!

The chase teams were able to navigate their way to near the landing area (after getting permission from the landowner), but ran out of track in the middle of a wheat field and had to walk about 800m to the landing site. The wheat crop was almost waist height, and radio-direction-finding equipment was needed to locate the payloads, which were essentially invisible until standing on top of them!

Thankfully the wheat crop gave the payloads a soft landing. Apart from a few bent antennas, the payloads ended up being in pretty good condition, and will be re-usable with some minor repairs.

Horus 74 Flight Path

Horus 74 Flight Statistics

Launch Date:2026-08-30T00:48:41Z
Landing Date:2026-08-30T02:55:53Z
Launch Site:-35.07579, 138.85710
Landing Site:-34.94745, 139.80022
Distance Travelled:87 km
Maximum Altitude:35210 m

Crossband Repeater Contacts

The cross band repeater was run part time as a controlled net, but was also left open for general communications for part of the flight as well. Net control, manned from a site near the bear rock look-out on the eastern side of the Mt Lofty Ranges, netted 89 QSOs with stations as far away as Warragul in Victoria’s Gippsland district east of Melbourne. Once the repeater coverage reached Melbourne, we had contacts with a number of amateurs from across the Melbourne metropolitan area as well as all across western Victoria, including Hamilton, Bendigo and Mildura. Overall, this was one of the more successful flights for the voice repeater – thanks to everyone who called us.

Horus 74 Crossband Repeater Contacts

Wenet Imagery Results

This flight flew a new camera module from Arducam, which uses the same IMX477 sensor in the PiCam HQ that we flew on Horus 72. As expected it produced incredible images, helped by the somewhat abnormal flight path that saw the balloon ascend up to nearly 20km while hovering over the Mt Barker area. As a result, we think these are some of the best images captured on a Horus flight to-date!

There’s still some work to do with white-balance correction – the camera was set into a fixed white balance mode that didn’t quite work throughout the flight. Future launches will experiment with alternative white balance settings, and will also save raw sensor data for better post-processing ability.

Thanks to the following stations who contributed imagery packets throughout the flight!

  • VK5KX-9: 229739 packets (56.09 MB)
  • VK5ZAP: 23198 packets (5.66 MB)
  • VK5QI-9: 187434 packets (45.76 MB)
  • VK5IS: 160412 packets (39.16 MB)
  • VK5ALG-9: 139102 packets (33.96 MB)
  • VK5ZM: 85363 packets (20.84 MB)

 

Meshcore Payload

Liam VK5ALG provides the following report on the MeshCore payload:
For Horus 74, I chose the RAK Wireless RAK4631 Nordic nRF52840 WisBlock Core Module, installed onto a RAK19003 Base Board alongside a RAK12500 WisBlock u-blox ZOE-M8Q GPS Module. I previously had success with other versions of 915MHz RAK Wireless boards on earlier Horus flights, such as the 585km point-to-point transmission using The Things Network on Horus 55. The RAK4631 can also transmit battery, temperature, and position telemetry, and it was able to be powered directly by the 3 x AAA lithium battery setup.
The objective of the experiment on Horus 74 was to test this iteration of the MeshCore payload and attempt to join the VK3 MeshCore network for QSO’s from the balloon payload via the VK3 mesh network. To achieve this, the SA-HorusHAB-VK5ALG-RP payload was configured on the Australia (Narrow) preset in repeater mode.
The SA-HorusHAB-VK5ALG-RP payload remained functional for the majority of the flight. I have already received a reception report from VK2WTF in Broken Hill, who received VK5VTX, VK5MS, and VK5DFY via the balloon repeater node. I am currently working on verifying this data.
Unfortunately, the online packet analytics tools are not currently providing the specific information I need. As a result, I will be setting up a local packet analytics system for future flights. I am also looking into increasing the payload battery power capacity.

 

Telemetry Reception Results

We had a great showing of stations receiving the two Horus Binary telemetry payloads, including quite a few interstate stations – thanks to everyone that contributed!

HORUS Receivers: BARC_RRR, Gum, VK3APJ, VK3BQ, VK3TAP, VK5AI, VK5ALG, VK5APR, VK5APR-9, VK5ARG, VK5AV, VK5BD, VK5BRL, VK5COL, VK5CV, VK5DC, VK5DLW, VK5FD, VK5GAC, VK5GY, VK5HW, VK5JPH, VK5KX, VK5KX-9, VK5KX-i5, VK5LN, VK5NEX, VK5OCD, VK5PJ, VK5QI-9, VK5RM, VK5SFA/R, VK5TRM, VK5TUX, VK5ZAP, VK5ZAR, VK5ZBI, VK5ZM, VK5ZMD, VK5ZTS, oakden_horus, vk3vcl, vk5is

VK5ARG Receivers: BARC_RRR, VK3APJ, VK3BQ, VK5AKK, VK5ALG, VK5ALG-9, VK5APR, VK5APR-9, VK5ARG, VK5BRL, VK5COL, VK5DJ, VK5GAC, VK5KX-9, VK5MAS, VK5OCD, VK5QI-9, VK5ZAP, VK5ZM, VK5ZMD, VK5ZT, VK5ZTS VK5RK, vk5mhz

The longest reception was by VK3TAP, at 647 km range, while the payloads were at 28.6km altitude.

Dashboards for the two payloads are available at the links below:

  • HORUS: https://grafana.v2.sondehub.org/goto/9KChbFQvg?orgId=1
  • VK5ARG: https://grafana.v2.sondehub.org/goto/PN_TxFwDR?orgId=1

Upcoming activities

Our next launch is planned for the 4th of October, and will feature our FM-SSTV payload, along with a high power Wenet imagery payload. You can find out more about this launch here: https://www.areg.org.au/archives/213023

We’re also expecting launches in November and possibly December – stay tuned for more details on these!

Next Project Horus Launch – Horus 75 – 4th October 2026 – SSTV & QRO Wenet

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AREG’s High-Altitude Ballooning sub-group, Project Horus, is planning their next launch for Sunday the 4th of October, with a planned launch time of 10AM ACDST. If we have to scrub due to poor weather, the backup launch date will be the 11th of October.

This flight will see a return of our FM-SSTV imagery payload, sending PD120 images on the 2m band, and also a new high-power Wenet imagery payload! This will be a great opportunity for those wanting to try out receiving the Wenet payload, but that might not have the larger antennas normally required. See further below for more information on how to get setup to receive these payloads.

Note: We’re still working on the flight report for Horus 74, this will be up soon!

Payload Frequencies

  • FM SSTV (PD120) on 145.100 MHz
  • Wenet Imagery on 443.5 MHz. (Running 1W transmit power!)
  • Primary Horus Binary telemetry on 434.200 MHz
  • Backup Horus Binary payload on 434.210 MHz

Tracking Links

This launch is currently planned to be performed from the Mt Barker High School Oval with the launch team arriving on site from around 9:15 AM. Note that access to the oval is via Stephenson street, and parking near the oval is extremely limited.

FM SSTV Imagery – 145.100 MHz

This launch will most likely be flying a FM SSTV transmitter operating on 145.100 MHz FM. It will run approximately 200mW transmit power. The transmitter will have 1 minute gaps between image transmissions to avoid overheating the transmitter. This payload last flew on Horus 60 with good results.

SSTV Image from Horus 60

The payload will be transmitting images using the PD120 SSTV mode throughout the flight, and can be decoded using any SSTV software capable of decoding this mode (pretty much all of them!). This mode is what was commonly broadcast from the International Space Station.

Examples of suitable software you can use to decode the SSTV pictures include:

Any FM receiver (including handhelds) should be capable of receiving this payload, though a Yagi antenna may be necessary for reliable reception at the edges of the transmitter footprint.

Wenet Imagery – 443.500 MHz – High Power Payload!

Imagery on this flight will be transmitted via the Wenet downlink system, which uses 96 kbit/s Frequency-Shift-Keying to send HD snapshots.

This flight be running with 20x more power than our usual Wenet payloads, so should be much easier to receive by small stations! If you have a RTLSDR and a 70cm antenna, have a go at receiving some of our HD-quality images!

Wenet can now be received on almost any modern computer, and even some newer android devices, using the new WebWenet software! This operates entirely within a web browser. Information on how to get setup to use this is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euo4BGB6wUU

Wenet image of Adelaide from Horus 74

Click this link to start up a browser-based receiver:

Wenet Web Receiver – 443.5 MHz

Windows users will need to install the ‘WinUSB’ driver, with information how to do this available here.

We encourage new listeners to try out the WebWenet software for decoding signals on this flight – however you can also still receive the signal using the Linux-based decoder, with details on this available here:

https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet/wiki/Wenet-RX-Instructions-(Linux-using-Docker)

During the flight, the live imagery will be available at this link: http://ssdv.habhub.org/

Primary Telemetry – Horus Binary v3 – 434.200 MHz – “HORUS”

Reprogrammed RS41The primary tracking telemetry will be transmitted on 434.200 MHz using the Horus Binary v3 4FSK data mode.

To receive telemetry, you’ll need either a SSB-capable 70cm receiver (think IC-7100/705/9700, FT-817, etc), or a SDR (e.g. RTLSDR or AirSpy), and some kind of 70cm antenna. Horus Binary is very robust, so it doesn’t take much antenna to receive this telemetry – a small vertical will work just fine!

Our decoding software is available for a range of platforms:

  • Windows / Mac – Horus-GUI – If you’re running Windows or a newer Mac, you can use our ‘Horus-GUI’ telemetry decoder software! Make sure you are on v0.6.0 or newer to decode the Horus Binary v3 telemetry. We have a detailed guide on setting this up, which is available by clicking here!
  • Windows / Mac / Linux / Android / iPhone – WebHorus – On almost any platform (including many mobile phones!) you can also decode the Horus Binary telemetry in a web browser using either audio input, or a RTLSDR (Android / Chrome only) by clicking this link! 
  • Raspberry Pi / Linux – If you have a spare RTLSDR and a Raspberry Pi (or other linux machine), you can set up a dedicated Horus Binary receiving station by following this guide.

Amateurs in the Adelaide and Central SA region are encouraged to get involved with the flight through receiving and uploading flight telemetry from our 70cm band tracking beacons. Every piece of telemetry data is valuable to the flight tracking and recovery teams so if you can help join the distributed receiver network to collect that data you will be making an important contribution to the project!

Backup Telemetry – Horus Binary 434.210 MHz – VK5ARG

A backup tracking payload will be transmitting on 434.210 MHz also using the Horus Binary 4FSK data mode, and can be received in the same way as the primary tracking payload, with information above. For this payload you will need to use a USB ‘dial’ frequency of 434.209 MHz.

Click this link to start up a browser-based receiver:

WebHorus – 434.210 MHz

AREG Amateur Radio & Electronics Sale – Saturday November 21st 2026

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AREG is pleased to announce that our yearly Radio & Electronics car boot sale has begun planning for 2026! We are very pleased this year to already have commitments from Comtek in Perth, and VK Radio in Melbourne to come to Adelaide for the event. We also are already accomulating quite a range of door and raffle ticket prizes to award on the day, including another Codan 9350 Mobile HF ATU thanks to HF Radio Solutions. The WIA VK5 Inwards QSL bureau, operated by AREG, will also be there for you to collect your cards!

How can I book a site as a seller?

If you would like to book a site at the event to sell your wares, please send us an email to vk5arg@areg.org.au with your request. Single car sellers are $10/park and include the entry fee for up to two people. If you are bringing a trailer, it is an additional $5.

Car park seller gates will open at 9.30am. Exhibitors inside the hall will be able to enter earlier by arrangement. As per previous years we invite the radio clubs of Adelaide to come along and mount a display of their activities as well. This is a great opportunity to introduce amateur radio to the public!

Where to find the venue?

AetherSDR:- A Revolution in HF SDR Radio Software – AREG Meeting Sept 18th

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With the rise of new coding environments and increasingly powerful SDR based HF transceivers, the world of HF Radio has never been more fascinating to explore. New software with quite amazing capabilities is appearing everyday that can leverage Software Defined Radio assets in new and exciting ways,

This month, AREG is pleased to present an introduction to a new HF radio software system that will revolutionise your SDR radios, from the Hermes Lite to your high end Flex radios. Steve VK5SFA will take us through the capabilities of the new AetherSDR SDR software and provide us some demonstrations of the never before seen capabilities it brings to the table for HF Amateur Radio.

How can you take part? AREG meets at the Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Court, Fulham on the 3rd Friday of the month. Doors open at 7.00pm for a 7.30pm start. Visitors are always welcome to come along and meet the members as well. See you there!

 

AREG Radio Direction Finding: Next event 5th September

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The next AREG foxhunt will be held on Saturday 5th September at 2.00pm, starting from the north park lands, on Lefevre Road, North Adelaide.

We will start with a 2m foot based 6 transmitter foxhunt around the parklands area.

Visitors are welcome and we do have loan equipment and training available for people to use who have never hunted before. Please let us know via email to vk5arg @ areg.org.au if you are coming so we can plan how much gear to bring.

At 3.00pm those with vehicle based hunting gear will set off looking for a collection of 2m and 70cm hidden transmitters.

Liaison during the day will be via the Summertown 70cm repeater on 439.900 MHz (-5 MHz input with 91.5 Hz CTCSS access tone).

If you would like to find out more, contact us !

Next Project Horus Launch – Horus 74 – 30th August 2026 – Cross-band Repeater – Mt Barker Launch!

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AREG’s High-Altitude Ballooning sub-group, Project Horus, is planning their next launch for Sunday the 30th of August, with a planned launch time of 10 AM ACST. If we have to scrub due to poor weather, the backup launch date will be the 13th of September (avoiding Fathers Day).

This launch is currently planned to be performed from the Mt Barker High School Oval with the launch team arriving on site from around 9:15 AM. Note that access to the oval is via Stephenson street, and parking near the oval is extremely limited. 

TRACKING LINKS

This flight will feature our cross-band repeater payload, enabling amateur radio operators around the state to communicate via the balloon! We’ll also have our usual Wenet imagery payload along for the ride.

On this flight we will also be running a MeshCore experiment provided by Liam VK5ALG. This consists of a MeshCore repeater, using the “Australia (Narrow)” Settings (NOTE: This is not the standard South Australian settings!). Please check the end of this post for information how to configure your node for this flight!

  • FM Crossband Repeater: 145.075 MHz Input (91.5 Hz CTCSS), 438.975 MHz output.
  • Wenet Imagery on 443.5 MHz.
  • Primary Horus Binary telemetry on 434.200 MHz
  • Backup Horus Binary payload, on 434.210 MHz
  • MeshCore Experiment – 916.575 MHz, Australia (Narrow) Preset

FM Cross-band Repeater Payload

This is the first test flight of a new experimental FM cross band voice repeater based around a Yaesu FT-530 handheld transceiver.The balloon repeater should be heard on:

  • INPUT: 145.075MHz with 91.5Hz CTCSS
  • OUTPUT: 438.975MHz  – 0.5W into 1/2-wave omni

Please note that this repeater is experimental, and may have performance issues or even fail completely during the flight!

To transmit to the balloon at the maximum range of 800km (once the balloon reaches 100,000ft ++) you should only need approximately 10-20W and an 2-4dB gain antenna.

Receiving the balloon at 400km range in a handheld environment should be achievable, but to hear the repeater at the maximum range of 800km you should expect to need a 10dB gain Yagi for a 0.4uV capable receiver and 2dB feeder loss

This setup is much the same as the LEO satellites but without the doppler shift.

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU CAN HEAR IT BEFORE YOU TRANSMIT!

This repeater will be operated as a controlled net, with the net control callsign VK5ARG – please listen out for net control before calling!

We will be offering QSL cards to stations that make a contact with net control during the flight, so get your stations setup and give it a go!

Primary Telemetry – Horus Binary v3 – 434.200 MHz – “HORUS”

Reprogrammed RS41The primary tracking telemetry will be transmitted on 434.200 MHz using the new Horus Binary v3 4FSK data mode.

To receive telemetry, you’ll need either a SSB-capable 70cm receiver (think IC-7100/705/9700, FT-817, etc), or a SDR (e.g. RTLSDR or AirSpy), and some kind of 70cm antenna. Horus Binary is very robust, so it doesn’t take much antenna to receive this telemetry – a small vertical will work just fine!

Our decoding software is available for a range of platforms:

  • Windows / Mac – Horus-GUI – If you’re running Windows or a newer Mac, you can use our ‘Horus-GUI’ telemetry decoder software! Make sure you are on v0.6.0 or newer to decode the Horus Binary v3 telemetry. We have a detailed guide on setting this up, which is available by clicking here!
  • Windows / Mac / Linux / Android / iPhone – WebHorus – On almost any platform (including many mobile phones!) you can also decode the Horus Binary telemetry in a web browser using either audio input, or a RTLSDR (Android / Chrome only) by clicking this link! 
  • Raspberry Pi / Linux – If you have a spare RTLSDR and a Raspberry Pi (or other linux machine), you can set up a dedicated Horus Binary receiving station by following this guide.

Amateurs in the Adelaide and Central SA region are encouraged to get involved with the flight through receiving and uploading flight telemetry from our 70cm band tracking beacons. Every piece of telemetry data is valuable to the flight tracking and recovery teams so if you can help join the distributed receiver network to collect that data you will be making an important contribution to the project!

Backup Telemetry – Horus Binary 434.210 MHz – VK5ARG

A backup tracking payload will be transmitting on 434.210 MHz also using the Horus Binary 4FSK data mode, and can be received in the same way as the primary tracking payload, with information above. For this payload you will need to use a USB ‘dial’ frequency of 434.209 MHz.

Click this link to start up a browser-based receiver:

WebHorus – 434.210 MHz

Wenet Imagery – 443.500 MHz

Imagery on this flight will be transmitted via the Wenet downlink system, which uses 96 kbit/s Frequency-Shift-Keying to send HD snapshots. Reception of the Wenet imagery requires a RTLSDR, and a 70cm antenna with some gain (a 5-element Yagi is usually enough).

We will be using the new ‘Wenet v2’ mode. There is information on updating existing Wenet receive setups available here.

Wenet can now be received on almost any modern computer, and even some newer android devices, using the new WebWenet software! This operates entirely within a web browser. Information on how to get setup to use this is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euo4BGB6wUU

Click this link to start up a browser-based receiver:

Wenet Web Receiver – 443.5 MHz

Wenet imagery from Horus 62

We encourage new listeners to try out the WebWenet software for decoding signals on this flight – however you can also still receive the signal using the Linux-based decoder, with details on this available here:

https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet/wiki/Wenet-RX-Instructions-(Linux-using-Docker)

During the flight, the live imagery will be available at this link: http://ssdv.habhub.org/

MeshCore Repeater Payload – “SA-HorusHAB-VK5ALG-RP”

This flight will include a MeshCore repeater payload operating using the “Australia (Narrow)” settings. This should allow relaying of messages from the Victorian MeshCore network into South Australia. This payload does not have an onboard GNSS receiver, so will not be beaconing a valid position.

To communicate via this payload, you will need to configure your MeshCore node as follows:

  • Radio Settings -> Selected Preset -> “Australia (Narrow)”
    • For reference, the Australia (Narrow) preset uses the following Settings:
      • Frequency: 916.575 MHz
      • Bandwidth: 62.5 kHz
      • Spreading Factor: 7
      • Coding Rate: 8
  • Experimental Settings -> Path Hash Size -> Default Path Hash Size -> 2-byte
  • Do not enable repeater mode on nodes in South Australia! 

Communication on MeshCore will be mostly via the Public chatroom.

Next Foxhunt: August 1st 2:00pm

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The next AREG foxhunt will be held on Saturday 1st August at 2.00pm, starting from a new location in the north park lands, on Lefevre Road, North Adelaide.

We will start with a 2m foot based 6 transmitter foxhunt around the parklands area.

Visitors are welcome and we do have loan equipment and training available for people to use who have never hunted before.

At 3.00pm those with vehicle based hunting gear will set off looking for a collection of 2m and 70cm hidden transmitters.

Liaison during the day will be via the Summertown 70cm repeater on 439.900 MHz (-5 MHz input with 91.5 Hz CTCSS access tone).

If you would like to find out more, contact us via the website!

AREG Annual General Meeting 21st August

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Now for our next general meeting, members are firstly reminded that this meeting is our Annual General Meeting. We are looking for some new committee members to join the team as we say thank you to our president, Gerard VK5ZQV who is stepping down from the role after 3 years. If you feel you would like to become involved in steering AREG into the future, please consider nominating for the committee.

Introducing the Kestrel Project

At our AGM we will also have a special presentation from Derek VK5TCP.  He has been developing a community-provided distributed Receiver network for aviation, maritime and amateur radio traffic, built from an operator’s perspective, opened up so anyone with an SDR and an antenna can join it. Nicknamed Kestrel, it allows monitoring of all sorts of radio services. Derek is currently integrating ADSB, AIS, AM/FM/SSB, Meshtastic, Meshcore, scanners, remote switching, and more.

An example below is his integration of ATC Air traffic control receivers with ADSB aircraft tracking.

More advanced features and strategies will be discussed as part of the presentation. . He continues to develop and expand the platform and is looking for others to use it and contribute if you can. This will be a fascinating look at what can be done with SDR technology today and is one not to be missed.

AREG AGM Details

The AGM will be held on Friday August 21st at the Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Court, Fulham. Doors will open at 7.00.pm with the AGM being held at 7.30pm. The technical talk will be held on conclusion of the AGM, with tea and coffee served afterwards.

Visitors are welcome – we hope to see you there!