The Amateur Radio Experimenters Group has been again asked to support the Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program for the International Space University in 2018. Held in conjunction with the University of South Australia in Adelaide, this year AREG is launching one balloon for the group carrying a variety of sensors and cameras. The students this year are focusing on space navigation and will be attempting to take the GPS and 9DOF orientation sensor data from the payload to pinpoint where in space the photos were taken from, and then overlay them like a checkerboard over the ground.

The flight will lift off at 10:00am ACDT on the 28th of January from Serefino Winery east of McLaren Vale.

Tracking of the flight will be available on the HabHub Tracker, available at this link. (Note that other balloon launches will also be visible on this page, including the Bureau of Meteorology launches from Adelaide Airport).

Live Imagery from the launch will be available at this link: http://ssdv.habhub.org/VK5ARG

Payload Telemetry Details

UPDATE: Due to the weather, there is now only one camera payload (as well as the RTTY and tele-command systems) planned for this flight, with a much lower planned burst altitude (~17km instead of 30km). This is because of the flight path and recovery concerns in the face of Severe fire-ban and harsh weather forecasts.

• Primary Telemetry:   434.650MHz +/- 5 KHz RTTY 100 baud 8N1
• Imagery Payload:   441.2MHz FSK 115k2 baud Wenet

As always we can use the help with receive stations copying the telemetry and pushing this to the internet for us. If you have a Wenet capable ground station please concentrate on the 441.2MHz downlink to maximise the data we collect for the university.

The auto-configure feature within dl-fldigi will automatically configure these settings for you once you pick the correct flight (‘Horus / SHSSP 2018’). The UKHAS tracking guide provides the information you need to set up a RTTY receiver:  https://ukhas.org.uk/guides:tracking_guide

Note that the RTTY payload on this launch is one of our ‘vintage’ MicroNut payloads, and is expected to drift a few kHz during the flight. dl-fldigi will keep track of the signal if it’s within your receiver’s passband, but you may need to re-tune during the flight.

Information on setting up to receive the Wenet imaging payload is available here: https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet/wiki/Wenet-RX-Instructions-(Ubuntu-Debian)

Note that this is a few orders of magnitude more complicated than setting up for RTTY, and requires a machine running a recent version of Ubuntu, some Linux experience, and a RTLSDR+Preamp. You also need to be within 100-150km of the balloon to receive sufficient signal.

The Flight Path

This flight is not ideal as it is landing in the Adelaide Hills, an area that can make recovery difficult for multiple reasons. The planning group are watching this very closely.

A note on the Weather

With the weather in the high forties this coming weekend if the CFS issue a Severe or higher fire ban on Saturday at 4pm then the flight will be scaled back or cancelled. It is possible a light weight disposable flight may still run (without the expensive scientific payloads) so we will still be looking for tracking. It all depends on the flight path and the fire ban status issued by the CFS. A final call will be made Sunday morning and will be posted to the AREG Website before launch.