SSTV High Altitude Balloon Event in NY June 29

Thank you for your encouraging words! I feel like I don't fit in a lot of places in life but I do feel at home in the ham radio community!

 

Are you bringing the balloon down after it reaches a certain threshold?

 

The guys in our area, Wisconsin HAB, used a small Voice Beacon transmitter:

http://www.silcom.com/~pelican2/PicoDopp/MICROHUNT.htm

That came in very handy, as on one flight, we had the APRS system fail.
The beacon was used like a fox hunt, and they were able to pinpoint it very well.
You can watch some videos at:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf9PmBcN6yF0xi6rV2_gSwA

https://www.facebook.com/WisconsinHAB

It was fun to track it in a vehicle as well as from at home via aprs.fi.

Looks like we are too far outside the 500 miles to listen in.
Good luck.

 

Do you have a plan in place to have it sent back to you when it's at the end of the flight? It has a lot of equipment on board. How much does the package weigh?

 

If the jet stream is right it might land in my backyard. Good luck. It's a lot of fun. BK

 

I'm really looking forward to this! South-central PA is within the footprint!

 

I am in Massachusetts and will certainly be checking it out.

 

No, it should pop on its own.. hopefully around 100,000 feet!

 

We will be tracking with APRS and chasing it. Right now it's about 3 pounds.

 

After retrieval (at your leisure of course) it would be really cool if you did a write-up on your website of the SSTV equipment, what worked, what needs improvement (if any) etc. My club is involved in a high school group that does this and we've talked about SSTV but haven't ventured there yet. None of us have any SSTV experience. We're using the Tracksoar for APRS which has worked well so far for 3 launches.

 

I think one or more of our launches used a SPOT tracker, which helped when APRS failed.
However, only the owner knew the actual link to track. Yet another thing to add weight
and cost if the payload was not retrieved.

https://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=101
https://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=100

Interesting device I didn't know existed, but hey "that's not ham radio!"

 

Looking forward to tracking and listening for it sir, wish you all the best in your experiment.

 

Great idea! Will do!

 

That's what the high school group used before they asked for our help. They still put it in as a backup and it came in handy one launch when the balloon landed in the ocean hard (they miscalculated the amount of helium to use) and the APRS went down. They were able to retrieve it a few days later.

 

The tones should be at the begining of the transmission and the android program robot36 will sync even in mid-transmission. I haven't tested yet with MMSSTV, I'll have to try it. Also we will be using Martin1 and I did update the website with that info-thanks for the suggestion!