Horus 56 (Telemetry-Only) – Flight Report

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Due to adverse predicted weather conditions, the imagery flight planned for Sunday the 1st of May was replaced with a telemetry-only launch. A Vaisala RS41 radiosonde, re-flashed with ‘Horus Binary’ firmware was launched under a 200g Hwoyee balloon, with a planned target altitude of 27km. The aim of the flight was to give receivers in the Central South Australia area an opportunity to get set up to receive the flight telemetry using the ‘Horus-GUI’ software.

Launch team filling the balloon.

This launch was performed from the Mt Barker High School Oval, a common launch site used by the group. The site was a little breezy, which would have made filling a larger balloon a bit difficult, but with the small balloon it was no problem. Thanks to those that came along and helped out!

 

In retrospect, the weather would have actually been pretty good for imagery, but this was difficult to tell based on the predictions in the preceding days. We’ll try to launch the imagery payload next weekend (hopefully on Saturday the 7th of May).

Many New Receivers!

As the balloon and payload ascended, it was great to see many receiver stations coming online to contribute telemetry. The new SondeHub-Amateur tracker shows the signal-to-noise ratio that each receivers is seeing, so it was interesting to watch how this varied for the different receiver stations. There were a few bugs encountered on the tracker which should be fixed before the next launch.

Horus 56 being received by 36 stations simultaneously!

Over the course of the flight we ended up seeing telemetry from 37 unique callsigns, including many new stations, and a few we haven’t seen in a while. We also saw stations from as far away as Swan Hill and Horsham in Victoria, and Mount Gambier in the South-East of South Australia!

After the launch, a few of the launch team headed up to a lookout near Mt Pleasant to track the flight (and get some lunch from the Mt Pleasant Bakery!). As this was just a telemetry payload (and we have plenty of those thanks to the Bureau of Meteorology!) there was no attempt to recover it.

The balloon burst just under 25km, a bit short of the expected 27km, and came to land to the east of Bowhill.

Overall flight path of Horus 56

Flight Telemetry Statistics

The following callsigns uploaded telemetry during this flight:

VK5QI, VK5ARG, VK5AKK, VK5BRL, VK5NTM, VK5TRM, VK5FATT, VK5KX, VK5LA, VK5MAD, VK5RM, VK5FJGM, VK5LJG, VK5APR, VK5HS, VK5GA, VK5EI, VK5ST, VK5PE, VK5GY, VK5LN, VK5CV, VK2DG, VK3MTV, VK5SWR, VK5FD, VK5CLD, VK3OF, VK5PJ, VK5DJ, VK5ATF, VK5DMC, VK5LO, VK3GP, VK5MAS, VK5NEX, VK5EME

Thanks for contributing to the flight tracking!

Next Launch – Imagery!

Weather permitting, we’ll have another attempt at the imagery launch next weekend, on either Saturday the 7th, or Sunday the 8th of May (noting Sunday is Mother’s Day – we’ll try and avoid this if possible!). We’ll post more about this as weather predictions become available.

AREG April Meeting – VHF/UHF Contesting – 22nd April

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AREG wishes to announce that due to our regular meeting night falling on the Easter Good Friday holiday this year, the committee has agreed to reschedule the April meeting to Friday 22nd . The meeting will be held both in person at the club rooms, (Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Crt, Fulham) and online using Zoom starting from 7.45pm ACST.

This meeting’s presentation is titled: “VHF/UHF Contesting – A Trilogy in 2 parts”

Do you remember a time when operating below 50MHz required CW and specialised license privileges? Are you new to the hobby and unaware that VHF/UHF is used for more than just fox-hunting and repeaters? If so, come and join Matthew VK5ZM and Grant VK5GR as we explore contesting on the higher VHF/UHF bands.   Perhaps this year is the year to dust off that shack-in-a-box radio you have stashed in a cupboard and come sit on top of a hill for an hour or two on a Sunday afternoon ?   Curious then join us on Friday the 22nd of April.

 

Next Project Horus Launch – Horus 56 – Sunday 1st May – NOW TELEMETRY ONLY

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Update Sunday 1st May: This telemetry-only launch was a great success, with many new stations contributing telemetry! There will be a separate post with information on the flight. We are still planning to perform the imagery flight next weekend, hopefully avoiding Mothers Day.

The AREG’s High-Altitude Ballooning sub-group, Project Horus, is planning their next launch for Sunday the 1st of May, with a planned launch time of 10 AM.

Updated Saturday 30th April

Due to adverse flight path predictions and cloud cover forecasts, the full imagery launch will not occur on Sunday the 1st of May, and will be postponed to the following weekend, (the exact day TBD) conditional on better weather forecasts.

However, since we have a NOTAM (NOtice To Air Missions) approved for the 1st of May, we will make use of it and do a telemetry-only launch, flying a single 70cm telemetry beacon. We are aiming for a maximum altitude of around 27km.

This is a great opportunity for those who have never tracked a Project Horus launch before to get setup to receive telemetry prior to the full-scale launch the following weekend. See below for information on how to receive the telemetry payload.

Live tracking for the flight will be available on the new SondeHub-Amateur tracker, at: https://amateur.sondehub.org/#!mt=Mapnik&mz=9&qm=1d&mc=-34.91286,139.36396&q=HORUS-V2

We will now be launching from the Mt Barker High School Oval, with the launch team on-site from approximately 9:30AM. Visitors are welcome!

The current flight path predictions have the payload landing to the east of Purnong:

Primary Telemetry – 434.200 MHz

Reprogrammed RS41The 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 ‘dial’ frequency of 434.199 MHz for the 4FSK signal to be centred in your receiver passband and hence be decodable.

Tracking Details – Imagery – 443.500 MHz

This payload will not be flying on Sunday the 1st of May. We hope to fly this on our backup launch date of Sunday the 8th of May.

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).

Imagery received via the Wenet payload from a previous flight.

A guide on how to get set up to receive the Wenet signal is 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/

April Fox Hunt – Friday 8th April – CANCELLED

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UPDATE: It’s unlikely we’ll be able to re-schedule a hunt this month. The next hunt will be on Friday the 13th of May.

The next monthly AREG fox-hunt is scheduled for this coming Friday night, the 8th of April, with hunters meeting from 6:15pm at the Adelaide Aquatic Centre car park.

This hunt will again see our usual two 2m (145.3 MHz, 144.390 MHz) and as well as our 70cm foxes (439.4 MHz) deployed somewhere within the Adelaide metropolitan area. The hunt kicks off with the transmitters being activated at 6.30pm.

Liaison will be via the Summertown (VK5RSB) UHF Repeater on 439.900MHz (-5MHz Input with 91.5Hz CTCSS).

Last month Theo VK5IR successfully found the 70cm fox using a receiver system consisting of a 70cm Yagi antenna made of tape measure, a RTL-SDR, and a tablet PC. This hold some promise in being a fairly cheap way of getting into fox-hunting, though there are some kinks still to be worked out. For now, here’s a video of Theo finding the fox:

Hope to see you there on the night!

Next AREG Meeting: Cloud-Free Power Monitoring – Friday 18th March

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The next AREG meeting will be held this coming Friday (18th March). As the clubrooms will be in use in preparation for the South Australian State Election, this meeting will an online-only Zoom meeting.

No description available.

This month’s presentation will be on power monitoring & home automation, with a focus on locally hosted systems, without a reliance on 3rd-party ‘cloud’ services. Andy VK5AKH will present his findings from setting up such systems at his new home.

The presentation will commence at 7.45pm ACDT on Zoom (that is 7.15pm QST or 8.15pm AEDT for our interstate members), and will be followed by a general business meeting.

As this is an online-only meeting, we would like to invite visitors to participate via Zoom – please e-mail vk5arg@areg.org.au, and we’ll send you a Zoom link prior to the meeting.

See you online!

March Fox Hunt – This Friday Night

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The next monthly AREG foxhunt is scheduled for this coming Friday night, the 11th of March, with hunters meeting from 6.15pm at the Adelaide Aquatic Centre car park.

This hunt will again see our usual two 2m and as well as our 70cm foxes deployed somewhere within the Adelaide metropolitan area. The hunt kicks off with the transmitters being activated at 6.30pm.

Liaison will be via the Summertown UHF Repeater on 439.900MHz (-5MHz Input with 91.5Hz CTCSS).

Last month saw our little 2m fox hidden behind some bark in a tree at Gepps Cross, as captured in the video above.

As usual, everyone is welcome to join in on the fun, members and non-members. We usually meet at the southern end of the car park.

Hope to see you on the night!

AREG’s VK5RSA Adelaide CBD repeater – supported by KernWi-Fi

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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

The repeater also received a major coverage boost when it was restored,  as we were able to connect it to the new central SA repeater network. This enhanced coverage for hand held users deep within the Adelaide CBD and extended it right across across central SA to places as far afield as Pt Wakefield, Yorke Peninsula, Victor Harbor and east as far as Tintinara.

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!

About our Sponsor

KernWi-Fi supply Fibre, NBN, Fixed Wireless Internet, VoIP, Event Wi-Fi and Radio Communications to residential and businesses all over Adelaide.  They also specialise in servicing the black spots of Adelaide.  To learn more, visit their website!

They are 100% Adelaide based and owned Licensed Carrier and work with many local communities to provide high speed internet services. They also sponsor various community groups across the state.

AREG Presentation: Introducing Slow Scan TV

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AREG in conjunction with Hayden VK7HH @ HamRadioDX presents an introduction to Slow Scan TV by Grant VK5GR and Mark VK5QI on YouTube tomorrow night.

The broadcast will commence at:

  • 7.45pm Australian Central Daylight Time
  • 8:15pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time
  • 7:15pm Queensland Standard Time
  • 5:15pm Western Standard Time
  • 0915 Universal time