Horus 75 Flight Report

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VK5QI Note: Sorry about the delay on this, I’ve been very busy!

Horus 75 was launched on the 3rd of October 2026, and was the first flight of our new ‘Wenet QRO’ payload – aimed to make reception of our high quality Wenet imagery much more accessible. The flight wasn’t without a few problems, but overall we still consider it a big success!

Launch, Chase & Recovery

The weather at the launch site was pretty grey and drizzly when we arrived, and there was serious consideration given to cancelling the launch. Thankfully the drizzle cleared up, and with that and light winds we decided to continue with launch preparations.

Filling the balloon

We had quite a lot of new faces at the launch site, including some interstate friends and some new AREG members! Many hands made the fill and launch easy – thanks to everyone that helped out!

Getting ready to launch!

We had 3 chase teams heading out after the payloads on this launch:

  • Mark VK5QI & Will VK5AHV
  • Liam VK5ALG
  • Autumn VK5CLD, Forest VK1TTY & Olive

After launch the chase teams immediately headed out towards the predicted landing area near Lameroo. As the predicted landing location moved south across the Mallee Highway we tried to trigger the cutdown payload, unfortunately without success. This turned out to be due to a poor connection, to be fixed for the next launch.

As the balloon continued to rise higher and higher, the chase teams nervously watched the predicted landing location move further south towards Ngarkat Conservation Park – somewhere we really didn’t want to land! Thankfully the balloon burst at 31615m altitude, and started it’s descent into farmland about 12km south-east of the locality of Parrakie.

Horus 75 Flight Path

Access to the landing site was challenging! The chase teams made what ended up being an incorrect decision during the final minutes of the descent, and had to slog through a very narrow and overgrown track to get near the landing spot. Many antennas went ‘ping’ on low branches, and the underside of our cars were well cleaned with all the grass we drove through! Thankfully we were able to get within a few hundred metres of the landing spot, and a short walk later the payloads were in hand.

Horus 75 Payloads, Landed.

Horus 75 Flight Statistics

Launch Date:2026-10-03T23:46:57Z
Landing Date:2026-10-04T02:03:01Z
Launch Site:-35.07579, 138.85710
Landing Site:-35.46506, 140.33605
Distance Travelled:140 km
Maximum Altitude:31615 m

Wenet QRO Imagery Results

Our new high-power ‘Wenet QRO’ (where QRO = approximately 1W) payload definitely lived up to the name, with higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) levels seen than on any previous flight. A few things we noticed:

  • We saw quite a few new callsigns receiving imagery, all running the browser-based WebWenet decoder.
  • Mobile receivers (e.g. VK5QI, VK5ALG and VK5CLD) had solid reception throughout the flight, as compared to the usual patchy reception due to being in a null of the payload’s antenna pattern.
  • Peter VK5KX’s tracking station (the ‘prime’ receiver on most of our launches) had SNR ‘clipping’ which may be an indication of the received signal being *too* strong!

Unfortunately the payload software hit a bug at about 16km altitude on ascent, and stopped capturing imagery. It did continue to transmit positional telemetry, allowing stations to continue test receiving. The software bugs have mostly been identified, and should be fixed for the next launch.

The following callsigns contributed packets to the received imagery on this flight:

  • VK5KX-9: 92106 packets (22.49 MB)
  • VK5GA: 70593 packets (17.23 MB, WebWenet)
  • VK5SWR: 25176 packets (6.15 MB, WebWenet)
  • VK5QI-9: 97207 packets (23.73 MB)
  • VK5APR: 63321 packets (15.46 MB, WebWenet)
  • VK5OCD: 43301 packets (10.57 MB, WebWenet)
  • VK5ALG-9: 97154 packets (23.72 MB)
  • VK5TBD: 34388 packets (8.40 MB, WebWenet)
  • VK5IS: 83524 packets (20.39 MB)
  • webhorus-767lzh (VK5AI): 41483 packets (10.13 MB, WebWenet)
  • VK5CLD-9: 107709 packets (26.30 MB)
  • VK5SFA: 1866 packets (0.46 MB, WebWenet)
  • N0CALL: 27315 packets (6.67 MB, WebWenet)

A dashboard giving more details on Wenet reception statistics (based off the GPS telemetry which continued after the images stopped) is available here.

Thanks to everyone that gave receiving the Wenet QRO payload a go! Expect to see high power Wenet on future Project Horus launches.

SSTV Payload Results

Just as on previous launches, the SSTV payload performed well throughout the flight, with many stations around South Australia receiving imagery. The onboard GPS receiver failed to get lock, and the camera focus was a little bit off, but the PD120-encoded images still came out looking pretty good!

Some samples of imagery received by Ivan VK5HS are shown below:

 

Horus Binary Telemetry Reception Results

Once again we had a good showing of receivers of our tracking payloads, and it was good to see a few users giving the WebHorus browser-based decoder a go on this launch. Thanks to everyone that contributed!

HORUS Receivers: BARC_RRR, Gum, VK3BQ, VK3FUR, VK3TAP, VK3TNU, VK5AH, VK5AI, VK5ALG, VK5ARG, VK5BL, VK5BRL, VK5CIL, VK5CLD-9, VK5GA, VK5GY, VK5HS, VK5IJG, VK5KX-9, VK5KX-i7, VK5LN, VK5MAS, VK5MHZ, VK5NEX, VK5OCD, VK5PJ, VK5QI-9, VK5RM, VK5SFA/R, VK5SWR, VK5TRM, VK5VC, VK5ZAR, VK5RK, oakden_horus, vk3vcl, vk5is

VK5ARG Receivers: BARC_RRR, VK3BQ, VK3TNU, VK5AKK, VK5ALG, VK5ARG, VK5BL, VK5BRL, VK5CLD-9, VK5KX-9, VK5MHZ, VK5OCD, VK5QI-9, VK5TRM

The longest reception distance was once again by VK3TAP, this time with a distance of 594 km.

Dashboards for the two tracking payloads are available below:

Upcoming Launches

We are hoping to perform at least one more launch before the end of the year, which will hopefully include a re-flight of the Wenet QRO payload. We also have a launch in planning for CSIRO, with another flight of their thermal imager.

Stay tuned to the AREG website for updates!