Three pico balloons at once The small Australian balloon PS-57 is over the Indian Ocean and heading for home to VK. This balloon crossed the equator to go around the northern end of South America, before dipping south again. Most interested in its movement have been numerous trackers in the USA and Canada. Andy VK3YT also has at least two other balloons currently floating. All lift-off with a solar powered payload of a 25mW transmitter on WSPR and JT9. PS-58 which has already circumnavigated the southern hemisphere, on its second leg went to Vanuatu, then performed a wide loop westerly over the South Pacific. The most recent launch PS-59, has travelled south of New Zealand with VK and ZL trackers following it, and is now half way towards South America. Trackers are also listening intently for the earlier PS-56 balloon that has twice circumnavigated the Southern Hemisphere, despite a catastrophic failure of its GPS tracking. Only a default beacon signal giving a Morse code message is heard. Will it be traced making a record breaking third time around the globe? Jim Linton VK3PC http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2016/january/three_pico_balloons_at_once.htm
Interesting. Nice to see more and more of these balloons like Calif Near Space Project K6RPT balloons. Also interesting to see what countries have APRS and what countries that are "dark." What would be fun is a balloon carrying a camera and do periodic SSTV transmissions on HF.
It would be nice if somebody mentioned the operating frequencies of these things. I followed the link and no info was there either. I remeber listening to Sputnik on (think it was just above 15 meters) on HF.
They're on the 30m and 20m WSPR channels. So mostly digi-mode, not usually "naked ear" friendly, but fun to track anyway. Try this link: http://picospace.net/ Click and read the FAQ, HF Setup link. Download the software. 73 de John - WØPV
They are all on 30 metres only, 10.1387 Mhz, the 30 metre WSPR frequency. They transmit WSPR followed by the JT9 telemetry. Leave your radio on the WSPR frequency don't change it to the the JT9 frequency. PS-59 JT9 is at 1950Hz, PS-58 at 1700Hz, and PS-57 at 1100Hz nominally. I receive them, well two of them, a few Hz from that. Goto the site mentioned by W0PV for the transmission schedule. I suspect that PS-59 is not transmitting when in darkness because the battery is too cold.
You can follow progress of the balloons here. http://picospace.net/tracker/new Just enter the the balloons you wish to follow, separated by a semi-colon, in the top left hand corner. It appears PS-59 hasn't been heard from for 38 hours There is some additional info here https://zerogees.wordpress.com/2015/11/25/andy-nguyen-balloon-record/ And here
