The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 19th of May at the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham.
Unfortunately Paul is unavailable to give the talk at this meeting. Instead Grant VK5GR will be presenting on RTTY contesting. Thanks to Grant for agreeing to present on such short notice!
This months presentation will be from Paul Simmonds VK5PAS, on the recent Troubridge Island DXpedition. Paul will talk about how the expedition was planned, what antennas and equipment they used on the island, and discuss the results of the expedition and lessons learned.
Doors open at 7.15pm and the presentation kicks off at 7.45. Everyone is welcome to attend. If you’ve never come along to one of our meetings, we’d love to see you there, all guests are welcome. For our remote members, the meeting will be broadcast via Zoom, and we’ll try and get a recording of the talk for later upload to Youtube.
After the talks we’ll all be given an opportunity to have an eyeball QSO among ourselves whilst enjoying a tea or coffee and a biscuit.
One of the services that the Amateur Radio Experimenter’s Group provides is a network of repeater stations that cover the Adelaide metropolitan and surrounding areas. These systems operate on the 6m-23cm bands from 3 sites in and around Adelaide.
One of the first repeaters conceived by AREG was the Adelaide CBD repeater. Inspired in the 1990s by the original 438.025 VK3RCC repeater in Melbourne (which was located atop one of the hi-rise towers in Melbourne CBD), the intention was to reach the deep CBD buildings and the Adelaide foot hills shadowed by the existing repeaters atop the Mt Lofty ranges.
The AREG repeater in Adelaide was originally established on top of the original Angas Street police station building – then 11 stories high in Victoria Square. When that building was subsequently demolished, it was moved to another building off Flinders Street, where it ran for many years before finally developing a terminal fault.
Today, VK5RSA is back on what now is one of the best communications sites in the CBD. This is all thanks to the support AREG receives from KernWi-Fi, who are sponsoring access to Westpac House on King William Street in the heart of the Adelaide CBD.
VK5RSA operates on 438.025MHz TX -7.0MHz RX with 91.5Hz CTCSS
VK5 Linked Repeater Network Coverage Map
VK5RSA is also part of the new central SA linked repeater network. This network now includes 10 repeaters, stretching from the Adelaide area right across to the eastern border of SA, and south to Victor Harbor.
AREG offers it’s sincere thanks to Phil Kern at KernWi-Fi for his support for the project to re-establish VK5RSA – it is fantastic to have been able to restore this service for the amateur radio community in Adelaide – and from such a fantastic site too!
They are 100% Adelaide based and ownedLicensed Carrier and work with many local communities to provide high speed internet services. They also sponsor various community groups across the state.
AREGs next car-based fox hunt will be held this coming Friday the 12th of May, starting from the car park of the North Adelaide Aquatic Centre Carpark at 6:30 PM. We’ll have three foxes deployed around the Adelaide area, on both the 2m and 70cm bands, so come along and have a go!
The frequencies will be:
145.300 MHz (1W transmit power)
144.390 MHz (100mW transmit power)
439.400 MHz (50mW transmit power)
As usual, liaison will be on the VK5RSB Summertown 70cm repeater which operates on 439.900 (-5MHz) 91.5 CTCSS. Please come up on the repeater so we know how you are faring throughout the evening!
The event is open to anyone with radio direction finding equipment and will span most of the Adelaide metropolitan area. We would love to see you there!
To round out the event calendar for 2023, AREG are happy to announce that Sunday November 26th will see the return of the AREG Amateur Radio & Electronics Sale! It will again be held at the DogsSA Training Facility in Kilburn as a car boot sale format. We will be inviting all of the SA Radio Clubs to participate as well as a number of commercial vendors!
More details will follow in coming months – but for now you simply need to:
Update: This presentation was recorded, and is now available on Youtube.
The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 21st of April at the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham.
This months presentation will be from Bob Phillips VK5FO, on the topic “Using Quarter Wave Coaxial Stubs as Notch Filters”. Bob will cover off the basic theory and characteristics of coax stub filters, demonstrate how to construct and tune them using a NanoVNA, and discuss their practical use-cases.
Doors open at 7.15pm and the presentation kicks off at 7.45. Everyone is welcome to attend. If you’ve never come along to one of our meetings, we’d love to see you there, all guests are welcome. For our remote members, the meeting will be broadcast via Zoom!
After the talks we’ll all be given an opportunity to have an eyeball QSO among ourselves whilst enjoying a tea or coffee and a biscuit.
Horus 59 came about as a result of the Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program launch, as we still an almost-full cylinder of Helium left over. Launch planning progressed through February, resulting in a launch on Sunday the 25th of February 2023.
The following payloads flew on this launch:
A FM-SSTV transmitter, sending imagery in the PD120 mode on 145.100 MHz;
A Wenet imagery transmitter on 443.500 MHz, with the new Pi Camera v3;
A Geiger-Tube based radiation sensor payload on 434.210 MHz (the same one that flew on Horus 58 and SHSSP 2023);
A LoRaWAN beacon, provided by Liam VK5ALG; and
Our usual Horus Binary telemetry payload on 434.200 MHz.
Iain Crawford VK5ZD captured much of the days events on video:
Launch Planning
This launch aimed to get more AREG club members involved in the launch planning process. Mark VK5QI ran a series of workshops in the lead-up to the launch, working through the regulatory and planing aspects of a high-altitude balloon launch. The day before the launch a smaller group got together to test telemetry reception and go through some of the more practical aspects of a launch. We hope to run more workshops like this for future launches!
Some of the launch planning group working through practicing filling a balloon.
Preparations & Launch
The launch team gathered at the Auburn Community oval at 9AM and started preparing for the flight. This launch saw many spectators, including a few from the mid-north. Iain VK5ZD was also on-site to document the launch activities, with a video to come soon (once he’s back from a holiday!). The launch site weather was perfect, with mostly clear skies and only light winds.
AREG Club Members preparing the balloon for launch, with many onlookers! (Imaged by the Wenet payload waiting to be launched)
All the payload were powered on, tested and sealed up, and the balloon was filled. This was a ‘fast fill’ launch, using up all the leftover gas from the previous SHSSP 2023 launch, and went smoothly.
The balloon and payloads were raised into the air, with the final payload handed over to Jackson (son of AREG member Brett VK5TLE) to perform the launch!
Launch!
Chase & Recovery
After the launch, the chase teams (and there were 7 of them on this launch!) headed north-east to get closer to the predicted landing area, pulling in at a rest stop south of Hanson, SA.
Chase Teams waiting for the balloon to burst near Hanson, SA
Peter VK5KX was set up here with his portable rotator station, receiving telemetry from all payloads:
Peter VK5KX’s portable tracking setup
While waiting at the Hanson rest stop the balloon was spotted flying at 30 km altitude, almost directly above the rest stop location! Appearing as a small white dot, many of the chasers were able to watch the balloon travel across the sky for about 20 minutes, before seeing it disappear when it burst at 32,807 metres altitude.
Iain, Ady, Drew and Mark watching the balloon drift along at 30km altitude.
The chase teams didn’t have far to travel to get to the landing area, only 7km to the North-East of Hanson, just off the Barrier Highway. All the teams were able to get into position to watch the payload descend into an empty paddock, a great experience for the new balloon chasers!
Horus 59 Flight Path
The payloads were quickly recovered, with the mandatory Wenet Payload group photo being taken once the payload were back at the cars:
Horus 59 Chase Team Group Photo, taken by the Wenet Payload camera.
FM-SSTV Payload Results
Apart from an issue with the onboard GPS receiver, the FM-SSTV payload transmitted imagery fine all throughout the flight. So far we’ve received a few reception reports from the Adelaide area, and also Pt Lincoln, though we expect this payload would have been receivable well into Victoria. If you received imagery from this flight, please let us know!
A selection of images received by Mark VK5QI’s home station in Adelaide are shown below:
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Wenet Payload Results
The new camera (A Raspberry Pi Camera v3) under trial on this launch produces images with excellent colour and low distortion, however as it ascended the lens started to de-focus, resulting in all the images above a few km altitude being quite blurry.
This is most likely due the extreme cold the camera was subjected to resulting in physical variation of the lens-to-sensor spacing. Whether this can be compensated for will be determined through some on-ground experiments (dry ice might be involved…), though it’s likely we’ll look at other camera options for future launches.
A selection of photos taken by the Wenet payload camera are shown in the following gallery:
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LoRaWAN Payload Results
On this flight Liam’s LoRaWAN payload featured an upgraded antenna, and even though the maximum altitude of this flight was 500m below when the LoRaWAN payload was previous flown (Horus 58), it was received another 50km further afield, by a TheThingsNetwork station in Ballarat, Victoria. We’ll try out this payload again on future launches, hoping to get even longer reception reports!
LoRaWAN Payload Coverage Map
Receiver Statistics – Horus Binary Telemetry
The Horus Binary payload proved to be as reliable as ever, reporting position and sensor data throughout the flight. A Grafana dashboard summarising the telemetry data from the flight is available here.
We saw a total of 25 unique callsigns receiving on this flight, with reception statistics for each station shown below:
Horus 59 - HORUS-V2 Receiver Statistics
Callsign
Received Packets
Percentage of Flight Received
First-Received Altitude (m)
Last-Received Altitude (m)
BARC-RRR
16
0.9%
11576
3437
N0CALL
1
0.1%
3347
3347
VK3TNU pi3-3
841
45.0%
13424
15292
VK5AJQ
1413
75.7%
9021
1681
VK5AKH
940
50.3%
6888
536
VK5AKK
1763
94.4%
550
1030
VK5ALG
1707
91.4%
726
1427
VK5ALG-9
1812
97.1%
311
536
VK5APR
1
0.1%
1081
1081
VK5ARG
1834
98.2%
309
570
VK5CLD-9
1518
81.3%
310
536
VK5DJ
982
52.6%
10405
12276
VK5DSP-hab
1368
73.3%
7775
4207
VK5EME-5
1814
97.2%
638
1342
VK5FADE
82
4.4%
1936
4044
VK5HI
16
0.9%
14690
14867
VK5IS
1848
99.0%
406
570
VK5KX#2
93
5.0%
11438
13232
VK5KX-9
1649
88.3%
669
570
VK5KX-i5
552
29.6%
13942
570
VK5LN
1551
83.1%
4373
5363
VK5NEX
1786
95.7%
1295
1342
VK5NTM
1777
95.2%
1842
806
VK5QI-9
1645
88.1%
310
606
VK5ST-4
1507
80.7%
726
1797
VK5ZBI
1070
57.3%
6739
3600
VK5ZQV
564
30.2%
14069
30447
Horus 59 - HORUSGEIGER Receiver Statistics
Callsign
Received Packets
Percentage of Flight Received
First-Received Altitude (m)
Last-Received Altitude (m)
BARC-RRR
1554
83.0%
1011
890
VK3TNU pi3-3
900
48.1%
11821
15415
VK5AKH
820
43.8%
6884
562
VK5AKK
1737
92.8%
567
1697
VK5ALG
1737
92.8%
639
1929
VK5ALG-9
1802
96.3%
312
500
VK5ARG
1828
97.6%
312
598
VK5CLD-9
1676
89.5%
312
500
VK5CV
1478
79.0%
987
3986
VK5DSP-hab
1342
71.7%
7779
6660
VK5KX-9
1802
96.3%
733
530
VK5QI-9
1816
97.0%
311
530
VK5ST-4
1789
95.6%
639
1122
VK5SWR
60
3.2%
22239
23376
Receiver Statistics – Wenet Imagery
This flight saw 10 receiver stations contributing packets to the live imagery on https://ssdv.habhub.org/. Thanks to all that helped out with this!
Even with some payload issues, Horus 59 was a successful launch and saw lots of AREG club members get involved in the planning, execution, and chase aspects of the flight. Thanks to all that came out for the day, and also thanks to those that helped receive telemetry throughout the flight!
Project Horus’ next launch will likely not be for a few months, and will hopefully see the return of the DVB-S transmitter payload, and live video from the stratosphere!
AREGs next car-based fox hunt will be held this coming Friday the 31st of March, starting from the car park of the North Adelaide Aquatic Centre Carpark at 6:30 PM. This is somewhat out of our usual schedule due to the foot-based hunt held earlier in the month, and we hope to get back to our usual second-Friday schedule in May.
We’ll have three foxes deployed around the Adelaide area, on both the 2m and 70cm bands, so come along and have a go!
The frequencies will be:
145.300 MHz (1W transmit power)
144.390 MHz (100mW transmit power)
439.400 MHz (50mW transmit power)
As usual, liaison will be on the VK5RSB Summertown 70cm repeater which operates on 439.900 (-5MHz) 91.5 CTCSS. Please come up on the repeater so we know how you are faring throughout the evening!
The event is open to anyone with radio direction finding equipment and will span most of the Adelaide metropolitan area. We would love to see you there!
The AREG’s High-Altitude Ballooning sub-group, Project Horus, is planning their next launch for Sunday the 26th of February, with a planned launch time of 10 AM ACDT.
This launch will be performed from the Auburn Community Oval, with the launch team arriving on site from around 9:15 AM. Spectators are welcome!
The payloads for this flight will include:
A FM-SSTV Transmitter on 145.100 MHz
A Wenet Imagery transmitter on 443.500 MHz
Horus Binary telemetry on 434.200 MHz
Radiation Sensor Payload on 434.210 MHz
Details on these payloads are available further below.
Tracking of the flight will be via the SondeHub-Amateur tracker, available by clicking this link.
A dashboard showing telemetry from the primary and radiation sensor payloads is available here.
Details on the payloads flying are available below:
Primary Telemetry – 434.200 MHz
The primary tracking telemetry will be transmitted on 434.200 MHz using the Horus Binary 4FSK data mode. Amateurs in the Adelaide and Central SA region are also 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!
Listeners that already have Horus-GUI installed are encouraged to update to the latest version, which is available at this link.
Note that you will need to use a USB ‘dial’ frequency of 434.199 MHz for the 4FSK signal to be centred in your receiver passband and hence be decodable.
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 50, and has since been upgraded to support higher resolution imagery.
SSTV Imagery Example
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 as with the cross-band repeater, a Yagi antenna may be necessary for reliable reception at the edges of the transmitter footprint.
We’ve also setup a temporary 2m SSTV skimmer up at AREG’s remote HF receive site, which (if it works!) will post received images here: https://botsin.space/@aregsstv/tagged/PD120
If you do receive images, please post them to Social Media and on Twitter include the #horus59 hashtag so everyone can see them! Reception reports would also be appreciated, please send these to vk5arg@areg.org.au
Radiation Sensor Payload – 434.210 MHz
A radiation sensor payload, using a Geiger-Muller Tube, will also be launched on this flight. This will be transmitting on 434.210 MHz, also using the Horus Binary 4FSK data mode. The aim of this payload is to investigate the variation in radiation exposure throughout the flight, and compare it with data from previous launches.
This telemetry can be decoded using the same Horus-GUI software as the primary telemetry. Note that you will need to use a USB ‘dial’ frequency of 434.209 MHz for the 4FSK signal to be centred in your receiver passband and hence be decodable.
Wenet Imagery – 443.500 MHz
Imagery on this flight will be transmitted via the Wenet downlink system, which uses 115kbit/s Frequency-Shift-Keying to send HD snapshots. Reception of the Wenet imagery requires a Linux computer, a RTLSDR, and a 70cm antenna with some gain (a 5-element Yagi is usually enough).
This payload will most likely be trialing the new Raspberry Pi Camera v3, which will hopefully bring improved image quality (if it works!).
Please note the transmit frequency of 443.5 MHz, which may require listeners to re-configure their Wenet setup. Listeners who are already setup to receive Wenet should consider updating their decoding software to the latest version (December 2022), with update instructions available here.
The AREG’s High-Altitude Ballooning sub-group, Project Horus, is planning their next launch for Sunday the 26th of February, with a planned launch time of 10 AM ACDT.
