Horus 54 – Saturday 25th January – 12:45PM Liftoff!
AREG is pleased to once again be involved with the International Space University’s Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program hosted by the University of South Australia. This year one balloon is being launched from Taylor’s Winery in Auburn as part of the program. Launch is planned to occur around 12:45PM on Saturday the 25th of January. Launch crews will be on-site from approximately 10:30AM.
All amateurs across the state are invited to participate in the flight through collecting the 4FSK and RTTY telemetry. All you need is an SSB receiver on 70cm, and an interface to your computer. The rest is software!
Telemetry Payloads
As always, we’ll be flying the usual assortment of telemetry payloads, including:
-
4FSK Telemetry decoder
The new 4FSK Binary telemetry will be transmitting on 434.660 MHz USB. This uses a custom decoder, with setup instructions for this available here.
- Our usual 100 baud 7N2 RTTY telemetry on 434.650 MHz USB. This can be decoded using dl-fldigi, with a reception guide available here. Note: Recent testing of dl-fldigi’s decode performance has found that the auto-configured RTTY receive bandwidth is too narrow, and can detrimentally impact decode performance (by up to 3dB!).
To fix this, open dl-fldigi, and in the Configure menu, select Modems, and then go to the ‘RTTY’ tab. Drag the ‘Receive filter bandwidth’ slider to 200, then click ‘Save’. Note that this setting will be reset whenever you hit the ‘Auto-Configure’ button!
Wenet Imagery Payloads
This flight will feature two ‘Wenet’ high-speed imagery payloads, as have been flown on many previous Horus launches. The centre frequencies for the transmissions are:
- 441.200 MHz – Nadir-pointing (Downward) Imagery
- 443.500 MHz – Horizon-pointing Imagery
These will be downlinking HD pictures throughout the flight, which will be available at this link:
Reception of the Wenet signal requires a RTLSDR and a Linux PC/Laptop. Instructions on how to set up the required software are available here.
Online Tracking
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).