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Project Horus news and events

High Altitude Balloon Launch – 26th Jan 2016

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(c) 2016 International Space UniversityThe Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program (SHSSP) is jointly organised by the International Space University (ISU) and the University of South Australia. It is a unique, five week live-in experience focusing on an international, intercultural and interdisciplinary (3 “I”s) educational philosophy for which the ISU is renowned.

The SHSSP have asked the AREG who have considerable experience with high altitude ballooning in Australia to assist with their participant Stratospheric Balloon Project, culminating in a high altitude balloon launch on Australia Day, the 26th of January 2016.

The balloon launch will take place, weather conditions favourable, from the Mt. Barker High School in the Adelaide Hills, just east of Adelaide.

The launch is expected to be released between 09:30 to 09:45 am local CDST January 26th, or 23:00 to 23:15 UTC January 25th .

The balloon is expected to carry two payloads, one supplied by the SHSSP participants as part of their course project and the usual AREG/Horus telemetry payloads. Telemetry will the normal RTTY mode on 434.450 MHz USB.

Please keep your eyes on the AREG website for more details closer to the date.

Matthew, VK5ZM

UPDATE: 23rd January – Balloon will ID as AX5ARG-1!

As the launch is occurring on Australia day, and Radio Amateurs across Australia can also use the AX prefix on that day in their callsigns, AREG has determined that the callsign that the balloon RTTY telemetry beacon will use for this flight is AX5ARG-1.

To commemorate the special callsign, stations who provide evidence of receiving the telemetry beacon via the habhub tracking database (through the use of dl-fldigi) will be eligible for the special QSL card. We hope this will encourage more people to attempt to receive the balloon and relay the telemetry to the Internet during this flight!

 

NEWSFLASH: Project Horus Balloon Flight Sun 18th October

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On Sunday the 18th of October, at 10am Adelaide time, Project Horus will be conducting a high altitude balloon launch from the Mount Barker area. This launch will be flying payloads designed by Adelaide area high schools, along with the standard Project Horus telemetry payloads. The launch is expected to reach approximately 30km altitude, with telemetry receivable from most of VK3 and VK5. The launch site for this balloon will be closed to the general public due as school children are present, we thank you for your understanding.

Anyone wishing to help track the balloon is invited to listen out on 434.450MHz USB for the RTTY telemetry. This can be decoded with the standard dl-fldigi software.

  •  Main Telemetry: 100 baud 7N2 Telemetry on 434.450MHz USB +/- drift. Callsign will be VK5ARG-1.
  • We will also be flying a cut-down payload and an experimental ‘LoRa’ telemetry payload (431.650MHz).
  • An excellent dl-fldigi setup and tracking guide is available here: https://ukhas.org.uk/guides:tracking_guide

The Flight and Payload information for this launch will appear in dl-fldigi on Saturday the 17th. Tracking of the flight will be available on the HabHub Tracker page.

Current predictions, (as of Thursday the 15th), place the landing area somewhere between Pompoota and Bowhill:

Predicted landing area, as of the 15th of October.

Predicted landing area, as of the 15th of October.

Project Horus Balloon Launch on WIA Field Day

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The Project Horus high altitude balloon group, based in Adelaide, is planning it’s 23rd balloon launch this Sunday 15th April, launching shortly after the WIA Broadcast between 10-11am.

This will be an amateur radio oriented balloon launch, with three payloads of interest to amateurs, intended to coincide with the WIA field day.

The group will fly the FM cross band voice repeater again. The repeater will operate with a 70cm uplink and a 2m downlink.

New frequencies will be used and they are;

  • Uplink: 438.900 MHz FM + CTCSS Tone of 123Hz
  • Downlink: 144.650 MHz FM (2m experimental segment) + CTCSS tone of 123Hz.

Based on previous flights, it should be possible to access the repeater from up to 800km away at apogee, with about 30-50W. A beam will help overcome the inevitable FM capture effect problems. The downlink is easily audible on any reasonable omni directional antenna, although if you are under the balloon’s flight path you may see 20dB fades or more.

The Amateur Radio Experimenter’s Group will be running net control on the voice repeater as VK5ARG from launch control in the Adelaide Hills.  On decent it is expected that the recovery teams will need to use the cross band repeater periodically, so we ask that people please observe the directions of the net control station.

An APRS tracker will also fly on this flight under the callsign VK5ARG-11 on the national 145.175 MHz frequency.   It will be possible to track the balloon progress via http://aprs.fi , make sure you check out the new horizon ring prediction service on this flight. Telemetry format packets are now also broadcast on APRS.

The ever reliable primary 300 baud RTTY telemetry beacon will also fly – at this stage it will be on 434.075 MHz (note update) (+/- 5kHz thermal drift). This signal is used as part of the group’s “distributed listener” telemetry network where any amateur receiving the data can upload what they are hearing over the internet.

The data, which is sent to the http://spacenear.us/tracker website, contributes to the landing zone predictions used by the chase teams. The chase-tracker teams have 3G Internet data in their vehicles and are actively using and looking at that data, so it is one way amateurs can have a behind the scenes involvement in the flight’s success. NOTE: this beacon only runs 25mW and can be heard at the radio horizon, so why not give it a go!

If you would like more information about the software setup required to participate in the RTTY telemetry recovery take a look at the Project Horus tracking page here http://projecthorus.org

Confirmation that the flight is a “go” can only be given on the Sunday morning (15th). Please keep an ear out on VK5RSB 439.900 or VK5RMB 146.875MHz.

Flying high altitude balloons is subject to the weather, stratospheric wind conditions and have various constraints on where we are permitted to fly, so the potential for the mission to be cancelled exists up until the very last minute before launch. We will endeavour to update various amateur forums and DX Clusters once it is in the air. Flight time should be around 2 & 3/4 Hrs.

If you would like to find out more about Project Horus, please visit our website at  http://www.projecthorus.org/ or for some short films of our past activities, the Vimeo channel at  http://vimeo.com.  This information can also be found in the text edition of the WIA News at  http://www.wia.org.au