Horus 66 was launched to test out some payloads for the upcoming Fleet Space LaunchBox STEM event (November 2nd), and to help chase teams test out their equipment. Unlike our Horus 65 attempt, the weather was excellent this time around, and no balloons were lost!

The launch was performed from the Mt Barker Summit Sport & Recreation Park, which is where the LaunchBox STEM event will be hosted. This gave us a chance to test out the site and see how well we could receive telemetry and imagery.

Also on this launch was a RASCube-LB payload from Robinson Aerospace, with the aim to validate the radio link (on the 915 MHz LIPD band) on a real launch. These payloads have been used in the LaunchBox program, and 2 of these will be launched at the event.

Setup & Launch

We had a good number of attendees at the launch site, including Laura from Fleet Space, and Simon from Robinson Aerospace. Peter VK5KX had his automatic tracking ground-station, on which we added a 915 MHz Yagi to support reception of the RASCube-LB payload. Matt VK5ZM brought his portable ground station, and we also had a few chase cars along to test out their systems.

Launch preparations went smoothly, with only light winds at the site. The launch was performed right on time at 10:30AM, with the balloon visible for about 10 minutes, before it ascended through clouds.

Filling the balloon, photo by VK5ZM

Just after launch, photo by VK5ZM

Just after launch, photo by VK5ZM

Flight & Recovery

The flight progressed as expected from our predictions, heading swiftly to the north-east, before slowing and turning to the west as it rose up to a maximum altitude of 35100m before balloon burst.

Horus 66 Flight Path

The landing was in mallee scrub approximately 10km north-east of Overland Corner, in the Riverland. Peter VK5PE, Bruce VK5MRB and Ivan VK5HS were able to access the landing area and recover the payloads for us – thanks guys!!

Bruce VK5MRB (left) and Peter VK5PE (right) at the landing site.

Wenet Imagery

For this launch we flew a PiCamera v2, to ensure we didn’t hit the focus problems encountered with the PiCam v3 on the last few imagery attempts. We ended up with excellent imagery throughout the flight, though we did hit some haze and colour balance issues at times.

The full set of images from the flight can be viewed (though in reverse time order!) here: https://ssdv.habhub.org/VK5ARG/2025-10-18

The small number of Wenet receivers for this flight did an amazing job, with almost 100% image reception from launch through to landing.  The following stations contributed imagery data:

VK5ZM: 85705 packets (20.92 MB)
VK5HS/p: 115982 packets (28.32 MB) (Running WebWenet)
VK5APR: 17450 packets (4.26 MB) (Using WebWenet on their mobile phone at the launch site!)
VK5QI-9: 137530 packets (33.58 MB)
VK5KX-9: 301637 packets (73.64 MB)
VK5IS: 214118 packets (52.27 MB)
VK5HS: 176737 packets (43.15 MB)

A dashboard showing telemetry from the Wenet payload is available here.

Horus Binary Tracking

As usual, we had a good roundup of receivers from all around South Australia tracking the Horus Binary payload. The following callsigns were seen to submit telemetry:

BARC-RRR, VK5AH,V K5ALG, VK5ALG-9, VK5APR, VK5BRL, VK5CBM, VK5COL, VK5DEN, VK5GA, VK5HS, VK5HW, VK5IS, VK5KX-9, VK5KX-i5, VK5LN, VK5NEX, VK5PE, VK5QI-9, VK5ST-4, VK5WE, VK5ZAP, VK5ZAR, VK5ZM, VK5TRM, VK5ZMD

A dashboard showing telemetry from this flight, including per-receiver reception statistics is available here.

The longest distance reception was by Michael VK5LN, at a range of 426km. At the launch site, Peter VK5KX’s tracking system was able to continue receiving the payload as it descended behind hills, likely through some combination of knife-edge refraction and tropospheric ducting. The last packet received from the launch site was at 178km range, 2300m altitude, and a reported elevation from the launch site of -0.1 degrees (with 4 degree elevation hills in the way!).

Peter’s IC-705 receiving Horus Binary telemetry just before landing.

The last Horus Binary packet received by Peters station. -0.1 degrees elevation!

Peter’s ground station looking directly at hills.

Up Next – LaunchBox – Sunday 2nd November

Our next launch will be as part of Fleet Space’s LaunchBox program, occurring on Sunday the 2nd of November. This launch is primarily an event for the student participating in the LaunchBox program, so at this stage we don’t expect the site will be open to the general public around the launch time, though it should be open later in the day.

You can still get involved by receiving telemetry and imagery from the flight, and tracking the launch online. In particular we are looking for more Wenet imagery receivers, as these live images provide great engagement for the students!

More details on tracking this flight will be posted on the AREG website within the next week.

UPDATE: Today’s launch was a great success, with all launch objectives achieved, and the payloads recovered by members of the Riverland Radio Club! A (short) writeup will be coming soon. Our next launch will be on Sunday the 2nd of November as part of the LaunchBox “Summit to the Stratosphere” STEM day!

AREG’s High-Altitude Ballooning sub-group, Project Horus, is planning their next launch for Saturday the 18th of October, with a planned launch time of 10:30 AM ACDST. There will be no backup date for this launch – if the weather is extremely poor, then the launch will be scrubbed.

This will be a small launch, testing some payloads related to the upcoming LaunchBox launch, occurring on Sunday the 2nd of November. This will include a standard Horus Binary tracking payload, and possibly a Wenet imagery payload.

The launch site for this flight will be the Mt Barker Summit Sport & Recreation Park oval, located just to the east of Mt Barker, and accessible off Springs Road and Heysen Boulevard. As there will be cricket played on the oval, we will be in the paddock area to the North-West of the grandstand.

TRACKING LINKS

• Flight Tracking via SondeHub-Amateur: https://amateur.sondehub.org/#!mt=Mapnik&mz=9&qm=12h&mc=-35.0677,139.23902
• Live Wenet Imagery: https://ssdv.habhub.org/

Details of the frequencies in use on this flight are:

• Primary Horus Binary telemetry on 434.200 MHz
• Wenet Imagery on 443.5 MHz. (Now receivable using a web browser! See below!)

On this flight we encourage new listeners to try out our new web-browser-based decoding software for Horus Binary and Wenet – find out more about this further below!

During the flight, all the payloads can be tracked lived on the SondeHub-Amateur tracker here!

Primary Telemetry – Horus Binary 434.200 MHz – HORUS-V2

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!

If you try receiving the telemetry from this flight, you’ll need a SSB-capable 70cm receiver (or a SDR), and the Horus-GUI telemetry decoder software. A brief guide on setting this up is available here: https://github.com/projecthorus/horusdemodlib/wiki/1.1-Horus-GUI-Reception-Guide-(Windows-Linux-OSX)

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.

Horus Binary telemetry can now also be received using your web browser, using either a SSB receiver or even a RTLSDR!

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

WebHorus – 434.200 MHz

We’ve also got a guide on how to use this here: https://youtu.be/VrgqF7ly-mU

Wenet Imagery – 443.500 MHz – USING NEW v2 MODE!

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, as trialed on Horus 64B. 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

This payload will be giving the PiCam v3 one last go before we give up and revert back to the PiCam v2.

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/

In July of 2025 we tried something we hadn’t tried in a while – doing a balloon launch in Winter. Finding a weekend suitable for a large balloon launch in Winter is pretty tricky – the right balance of ground weather conditions (low wind, no rain) and a flight path that doesn’t end up hundreds of km to the east means that launches often get delayed and delayed – and that’s exactly what happened!

The intention of Horus 64 was to re-fly our cross-band repeater payload up to an altitude of at least 35km, allowing repeater coverage between Adelaide and Melbourne. Unfortunately we were never able to get the repeater payload in the air due to poor weather, but we did still do 2 balloon launches with lighter payloads.

Another objective of the launch was to experiment with, and promote the use of the new web-browser-based decoders for our telemetry transmissions. These decoders were developed by Michaela VK3FUR, and make reception of our Horus Binary tracking telemetry, and our Wenet imagery, much more accessible.

Horus 64A – 6th July 2025

What I’m now calling ‘Horus 64A’ launched on Sunday the 6th of July. It was pretty clear during the preceding week that the repeater launch wasn’t going to be possible, with the flight path prediction landing in inaccessible areas north of Waikerie. The call was made Friday night to scrub the full-size launch and send up a lightweight tracking payload under a small (100g) balloon, to give stations some telemetry to practice reception on.

Horus 64A – Waiting for launch.

Weather at the launch site turned out to be ideal, with low winds and clear skies. Unfortunately the flight path predictions were unchanged, so a full launch was still not possible. Mark VK5QI and Will VK5AHV filled the (very small) balloon with a few interested onlookers, and the balloon was released on time at 10AM.

The flight proceeded as expected until about 15km altitude, where we suspect that some of the insulation around the payload gave out, resulting in a sudden drop in temperature and the failure of the tracking payload at just under 17km altitude. No further signals were received. A dashboard showing telemetry from this flight is available at this link.

Thanks to the stations that received telemetry from this flight: BARC-RRR,VK3APJ,VK3APJ-2,VK5AI,VK5AKK,VK5ALG,VK5APR,VK5ARG,VK5CBM,VK5CV,VK5FD,VK5GA,VK5GY,VK5IS,VK5KX-i5,VK5LN,VK5NEX,VK5NTM,VK5QI-9,VK5RK,VK5ST-4,VK5TRM,VK5ZAR,VK5ZBI-1,VK5ZBI-2,VK5ZM,VK5ZMD

Horus 64B – 13th July 2025

Our second try at the repeater launch was for the following weekend. Again, as we got closer to the launch day the weather forecasts were looking pretty poor. This time we had a combination of very high wind speeds at the launch site, as well as a flight path that would take the payloads east into Victoria, landing somewhere inside the Murray Sunset National Park.

Not a very good flight path prediction!

When it became clear that a full-size launch was once again not going to be possible, the plan pivoted to another smaller launch – this time with a tracking payload *and* an imagery payload, accepting that these payloads might not be recovered on the launch day.

Michaela VK3FUR was able to quickly build up a Wenet imagery payload to fly on this launch. This payload also included software which alternated between the ‘classic’ Wenet modulation (in use since ~2018), and a new ‘Wenet v2’ mode, which is more spectrally efficient. We also added on a PiCam v3 as one last test to see if we could get the auto-focus behaving correctly. Michaela drove over from Melbourne along with Geordie VK3CLR and Alex VK3SNP the day before the launch! You can read her writeup on the payload and flight here.

Launch!

On arrival at the launch site, it was immediately obvious that a full-size launch would have been a very bad idea – it was windy! After finding a sheltered spot to fill, it was decided to try flying a 600g Hwoyee balloon to give the imagery payload a bit more time in the area. Filling went fairly quickly, with many hands available to help out with ‘balloon management’.

Launching was a bit more challenging – with wind gusts picking up right as we were preparing for launch, and the balloon almost hitting the ground! The entire launch was captured by Autumn VK5CLD:

Reception Experiments

With the flight heading to the east at over 200 kph we decided it wasn’t worth chasing, and instead headed up to a lookout near Palmer to attempt to track the payloads for as long as possible.

Many different antenna setups receiving imagery and telemetry!

Peter VK5KX and Matt VK5ZM were already on-site, with Pete’s tracking antenna setup, and Matt’s ‘pelican case portable’ receiver. After the launch crew arrived, we had some fun trying out different reception setups, including receiving Wenet imagery using a mobile phone, RTLSDR, and a 18-element yagi! (Worked great, but very difficult to point accurately!). Michaela demonstrated a cheap Wenet reception setup which she describes in her blog post.

Burst, Landing & Delayed Recovery

With a 600g balloon, we had expected a burst altitude around 30km. Unfortunately the balloon failed at just over 20km altitude, and we suspect it might have been due to a collision with one of the payloads!

The payloads descended under parachute to a landing approximately 13km north-east of Underbool, Victoria. The last telemetry packet was received by VK5TRM at an altitude of just over 1km, from 130km away. The last imagery packets were received at an altitude around 2.2km by VK5KX’s portable setup, at a range of 250km.

The next day, Michaela & company visited the predicted landing area (a bit of a detour, while heading home to Melbourne) and were able to spot the payloads. A short walk across a paddock, and the payloads were easily recovered.

Michaela was able to create a time-lapse showing the images captured by the payload in the last few hours after landing, before the battery failed:

Wenet Payload Imagery

Unfortunately we hit the PiCam v3 focus issues again – this time we think it was caused by the autofocus algorithms not handling the movement of the payloads during flight. Essentially all of the images taken after launch were out of focus. On our next launch we will most likely switch back to the PiCam v2 or PiCam HQ.

The ‘Wenet v2’ modulation performed well, and we’ll be switching to this on all future launches. Further information on how to receive this will be provided before the next launch.

A selection of images from the flight as shown below:

Flight Statistics

The following stations received the ‘ITSWINDY’ Horus Binary Telemetry during this flight: AAA-RX,Angaston-RX,BARC-RRR,VK3APJ,VK3BKQ,VK3FUR,VK3TNU,VK5AKK,VK5ALG,VK5ARG,VK5BRL,VK5CBM,VK5CLD-9,VK5FD,VK5GA,VK5GY,VK5HS,VK5HW,VK5IS,VK5KAW,VK5KX-i5,VK5LN,VK5NE,VK5NEX,VK5PJ,VK5QI-9,VK5RK,VK5ST-4,VK5WE,VK5ZAR,VK5ZBI,VK5ZBI-2,VK5ZM,VK5ZMD,VK5ZQV,vk5cv,vk5trm

The furthest reception was from VK3BKQ near Geelong, at a distance of 495 km!

You can find a breakdown of packets received on the flight dashboard, available at this link.

The following stations received imagery packets from the ‘Wenet Classic’ transmitter (VK3FUR):

• VK5LA: 28413 packets (6.94 MB)
• VK3TNU-2: 45224 packets (11.04 MB)
• VK5KX-9: 23358 packets (5.70 MB)
• vk5cld-2: 4438 packets (1.08 MB)
• VK5QI-9: 24411 packets (5.96 MB)
• VK5HS: 20952 packets (5.12 MB)
• VK5ZM: 6831 packets (1.67 MB)
• VK5CLD-9: 20679 packets (5.05 MB)
• VK3SNP: 225 packets (0.05 MB)
• VK5IS: 15612 packets (3.81 MB)

The following stations received imagery packets from the ‘Wenet v2’ transmitter (VK4XSS):

VK3SNP: 35751 packets (8.73 MB)
VK3SNP-M: 619 packets (0.15 MB)
VK5QI-PHONE : 1252 packets (0.31 MB)
Vk3fur-mobile: 6984 packets (1.71 MB)
VK5ZM: 15631 packets (3.82 MB)
vk3clr: 600 packets (0.15 MB)
VK3FUR: 47417 packets (11.58 MB)
VK5KX-9-v2: 22843 packets (5.58 MB)

Thanks to everyone that received telemetry and imagery on this flight, and in particular thanks to those stations that gave WebHorus and WebWenet a go!

Next Horus Launch – August / September

We still want to try and get the cross-band repeater in the air. This will hopefully happen in late August or early September – information will be posted here once a date is finalised.

We can also announce that we will be performing high-altitude balloon launches for Fleet Space later in the year, as part of their LaunchBox STEM program. The first of these launches is expected to occur in mid-October.