The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 21st of February at the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham.
In this presentation, Arthur, VK5AI, will detail the investigation to determine the source of 160m band (1.8 MHz) interference that was being experienced across the eastern suburbs of Adelaide and the subsequent actions to resolve the issue.
Doors open at 7.00pm and the presentations kick off at 7.30. 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.
The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 17th of January at the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham.
The presentations this month will be a series of ‘Lighting Talks’ (5-10 minutes!) from club members, about what projects they have been doing over the holiday break. This could be anything from a (short) presentation on a technical topic, to a live video demonstration of a project they have been building!
Doors open at 7.00pm and the presentations kick off at 7.30. 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.
Project Horus’s 63rd launch was run on the 1st of December 2024. This was the first flight of our new 2m/70cm cross-band repeater payload, and also flew an experimental imagery payload. The flight reached an altitude of 31359m before landing in a paddock to the east of Walker Flat. 68 different stations were heard on the cross-band repeater throughout the flight – a great result, and one that we hope to best on a future launch!
Launch, Chase & Recovery
Launch was a fairly relaxed affair, with a fairly small launch crew and fairly good weather at the launch site. A large flock of corellas did cause us a bit of concern, but thankfully they stayed clear of the balloon.
A time-lapse of preparations and launch is shown here:
After launch, the chase teams headed off towards the landing area, via a quick stop at Bowhill for coffee. This launch had Mark VK5QI and Will VK5AHV; Autumn VK5CLD; and Peter VK5APR chasing from the launch site.
The balloon reached a peak altitude of 31359 m above Younghusband, before bursting and descending for a landing to the east of Walker Flat.
Horus 63 Flight Profile
As the chase teams from Mt Barker arrived near the landing area, they met up with Darin VK5IX and family (Glenys, Greg and Cameron), who were also out chasing. Everyone pulled over on the side of the road and were able to just catch a glimpse of the payloads landing on a paddock about 500m from the road.
Horus 63 payloads, as found – note the cross-band repeater antenna pointing up!
The repeater was found to still be operational after landing, and the team were able to use this while coordinating the recovery. After obtaining permission from the landowners, the paddock was entered carefully (very sandy!) and the payloads recovered – with the obligatory Wenet payload team photo!
Cross-band Repeater Payload
The cross-band repeater performed flawlessly on its first outing, with contacts quickly filling up the log books of VK5ARG net control, run by Grant VK5GR. A big thanks to Grant for managing the repeater so the chase teams could focus on recovery!
The following stations were recorded in the log during the flight (displayed in alphabetical order):
Based on the log, we believe the furthest contacts were to Michael (VK5LN) in Pt Lincoln, and Tim (VK3TNU) in Horsham, Victoria – both around 325 km! Unfortunately the flight didn’t quite get high enough for reliable contacts in to Melbourne.
Theo VK5IR live-streamed the repeater contacts on Facebook throughout the flight – a recording of this is available on Youtube here:
One of the concerns with this payload was how hot (or cold!) it would get throughout the flight. Peter VK5KX provided a temperature logger which was installed into the payload box. This showed that the payload’s temperature stayed in a fairly reasonable range, dropping down to -10˚C during the ascent, and rising up to 30˚C after landing.
We’re still finalising our QSL card design for this flight – these will most likely get sent by the WIA QSL bureau to save on costs. If you’re not a members of the WIA and would like to be sent a card directly, please contact Mark at vk5qi@rfhead.net.
This repeater (after a few repairs) will certainly make an appearance on future launches, with the next aim to get it up to >35km to allow more contacts into VK3. We may also look into increasing the transmit power from 0.5W to 1.5W.
Primary Tracking Station – VK5KX & VK5ZM
Up on Angas Valley Road, overlooking the Murray-lands area, Peter VK5KX and Matt VK5ZM had set up a portable ‘super station’, which provided reliable reception of the imagery and telemetry throughout the flight. Peter’s station used a Wimo 70cm X-Quad beam on a Az/El rotator, while Matt’s used a vinnant.sk 70cm turnstile. Peter was able to receive almost all of the imagery transmitted during the flight! Grant VK5GR was also setup nearby running net control for the repeater – thanks guys!
Thanks to Glenys Roberts for the photos from the receiver site.
Wenet Imagery Payload
This flight aimed to evaluate the PiCam v3 camera (previously tried on Horus 59) in auto-focus mode, with lots of software improvements and additions from the previous flights. Many more telemetry datapoints were transmitted in realtime during the flight, including RPi CPU and Radio temperature, and even the live lens position as the PiCam v3 attempted to autofocus.
Sadly we still had autofocus issues resulting in many blurry images, however the additional telemetry transmitted to the ground during this flight provided a lot of data to help improve performance on future launches. The full telemetry from this payload is available on a Grafana dashboard here.
A big thanks to the stations that set up to receive Wenet imagery and telemetry on this flight:
We’d also like to thank the Raspberry Pi foundation developers for providing lots of advice on how to best optimise the autofocusing system, and we plan to continue working with them to push the limits on what a PiCam v3 can do!
Horus Binary Telemetry Payloads
Our trusty Horus Binary telemetry payloads worked fine throughout the flight, providing our primary flight tracking ability. Thanks to the following stations that helped track these payloads:
Liam’s TheThingsNetwork payload flew again, with a total of 98 gateways receiving telemetry. The furthest receiver was located near Finley, NSW, at a distance of 557km.
A map showing the receiver locations is below, with more detail available on the flight dashboard.
Conclusion
Thanks to everyone that participated in this flight, through helping at the launch, tracking, chasing, or calling into the repeater!
We hope to do a re-fly of this launch in the new year (towards the end of summer), aiming to get the repeater payload up high enough to give coverage further into VK2 and VK3 – stay tuned!
Update: The talk was recorded and is available below!
The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 20th of Decemberat the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham, with doors opening at 7:00 PM, and the presentation kicking off at 7:30 PM. Everyone is welcome!
This month’s presentation will be by Bob VK5FO, giving us an introduction to Fused Deposition Modelling (filament-based) 3D printing. Bob will cover some of the entry-level printers available, different filament types, and how to get started using designs you can find online.
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.
We won’t be holding a general business meeting this month – instead there’ll be time after the presentation for a catch-up before we break for the holiday season.
We’ll be back in January with a lightning talks session, on all of our holiday amateur radio projects!
AREG’s Internet Repeater Linking Project (IRLP) node #6214 is temporarily offline (as of 16th November 2024) due to hardware failures. This is being worked on by Ben VK5BB, and is expected to be back up and running in about a month.
AREG’s High-Altitude Ballooning sub-group, Project Horus, is planning their next launch for Sunday the 1st of December, with a planned launch time of 10 AM ACDST. If we have to scrub due to poor weather, the backup launch date will be the 8th of December.
UPDATE 27th Nov: This launch is currently planned to be performed from the Mt Barker High School Oval with the launch team arriving on site from around 9:15 AM. Note that access to the oval is via Stephenson street, and parking near the oval is extremely limited.
This flight will feature a new cross-band repeater payload, enabling amateur radio operators around the state to communicate via the balloon! Along with this will be a newly built Wenet Imagery payload, using a PiCam v3 in autofocus mode.
This is the first test flight of a new experimental FM cross band voice repeater based around a Yaesu FT-530 handheld transceiver.The balloon repeater should be heard on:
INPUT: 145.075MHzwith 91.5Hz CTCSS
OUTPUT: 438.975MHz – 0.5W into 1/2-wave omni
Please note that this repeater is experimental, and may have performance issues or even fail completely during the flight!
To transmit to the balloon at the maximum range of 800km (once the balloon reaches 100,000ft ++) you should only need approximately 10-20W and an 2-4dB gain antenna.
Receiving the balloon at 400km range in a handheld environment should be achievable, but to hear the repeater at the maximum range of 800km you should expect to need a 10dB gain Yagi for a 0.4uV capable receiver and 2dB feeder loss
This setup is much the same as the LEO satellites but without the doppler shift.
PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU CAN HEAR IT BEFORE YOU TRANSMIT!
This repeater will be operated as a controlled net, with the net control callsign VK5ARG – please listen out for net control before calling!
We will be offering QSL cards to stations that make a contact with net control during the flight, so get your stations setup and give it a go!
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.
A backup tracking payload will be transmitting on 434.210 MHz using the Horus Binary 4FSK data mode, and can be received in the same way as the primary tracking payload, with information above. For this payload you will need to use a USB ‘dial’ frequency of 434.209 MHz.
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 be experimenting with a PiCam v, which we previously flew with only partial success on Horus 59. This time around many software updates have been written, hopefully allowing the PiCam v3’s autofocus to work on a balloon launch. This flight aims to test out these software changes, and gather data to help improve performance on future launches.
Please note the transmit frequency of 443.5 MHz, which may require listeners to re-configure their Wenet setup.
Note: Stations that are already ready to receive Wenet are advised to update to the latest testing version for this flight. See here for instructions: https://gist.github.com/darksidelemm/cdc36a90ca96b87d148fdd7d68d5d5fe
This flight will also fly a LoRaWAN payload built by Liam VK5ALG, relaying positions via TheThingsNetwork (TTN), a global Internet-of-Things network with hundreds of receiver gateways across Australia. You can find out more about how TheThingsNetwork works here.
The aim of this payload is to test a new antenna, and try and beat our previous range records on the 915 MHz band.
The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 15th of November at the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham, with doors opening at 7:00 PM, and the presentation kicking off at 7:30 PM. Everyone is welcome!
This month’s presentation will be by Tony VK3JED, giving us an introduction to the M17 digital voice mode. Tony will discuss the history of this mode, how it differs from other existing digital voice modes, and how you can get on air using this mode. Tony will also demonstrate the first commercial radio with M17 included, the CS7000!
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.
This month’s presentation will be by Tony VK3JED, giving us an introduction to the M17 digital voice mode. Tony will discuss the history of this mode, how it differs from other existing digital voice modes, and how you can get on air using this mode. Tony will also demonstrate the first commercial radio with M17 included, the CS7000!
