434 MHz balloon goes around the world

434 MHz balloon goes around the world

The 434 MHz solar powered party balloon B-64, launched by radio amateur Leo Bodnar M0XER, is approaching the UK at the end of its record breaking journey around the world

Leo launched his balloon from Silverstone in the UK on July 12, 2014. It traveled east across Asia, the Pacific and the Americas and is expected to complete the final transatlantic crossing arriving over Cornwall on July 31 or August 1. It is then likely to continue eastwards into Europe.


Radio amateurs and listeners should be able to receive B-64's Contestia 64/1000 signal on 434.500 MHz USB with the usual pips. When it is over the UK it will alternate the Contestia transmission with APRS also on 434.500 MHz running 10 mW output.

During the circumnavigation of the northern hemisphere B-64 has traveled over 25,000 km across some of the most remote terrain in the planet.

See the track of B-64 at
http://spacenear.us/tracker/?filter=B-64

Leo Bodnar M0XER balloons
http://www.leobodnar.com/balloons/

Download the dl-fldigi software from
http://ukhas.org.uk/projects:dl-fldigi

Beginners Guide to Tracking using dl-fldigi
http://ukhas.org.uk/guides:tracking_guide

Listen to balloons online (when in range of south-east UK) from anywhere in the world with the SUWS 434 MHz WebSDR (select USB)
http://amsat-uk.org/2013/12/28/websdr-for-434-and-1296-mhz/

To get up-to-date information on balloon flights subscribe to the UKHAS Mailing List by sending a blank email to this address:
ukhas+subscribe@googlegroups.com

High Altitude Balloon chat on the #highaltitude IRC channel at
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=highaltitude




http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2014/july/434_mhz_balloon_goes_around_the_world.htm




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Looks like it has climbed to near bursting altitude and predicted to burst and land short of land.

 

Been fun tracking that on APRS.

...DOUG
KD4MOJ

 

All I got to say about this: WOW!

 

Good thing it wasn't mistaken for a commercial airliner and shot down.

 

The balloon was designed to be a floater, a bit tricky to put in just enough gas to float at 41k that go to high and burst.
What I find interesting is the device weights 11 grams is frequency agile. It will switch to the correct frequency 434.500 MHz (no ham in Brittan) and 144.390 as it approached the US.
I tired to track it but I did not have good LOS.

http://leobodnar.com/balloons/B-64/index.html

 

Will it keep on going forever?

 

Probably yes But there have been also balloon never came back due to unknown reason.

At this altitude you will find just a few airliners. Most of them are traveling between 30k and 40kfeet.

 

Surprising that the North Koreans didn't nuke it.

 

I am curious where the data for B-63 and B-66 is coming from or is it just guessing based on estimated winds? Both of those are over central Asia.

 

I expect they're educated guesses based on the balloons' expected altitudes and NOAA high level predictions like this:



The predictor on the spacenear.us site is assuming a more normal ascend, burst, descend flight trajectory, and doesn't do anything useful with floating balloons.

 

what if this balloon carried a camera and periodically send out SSTV on HF?

 

I'd love to read more about the payload design. How he handles the temp, etc.

 

What a delightfully kookie idea!

73 de Dave, N7AIG

 

What is to prevent a balloon from getting sucked into a Jet intake one day and downing an aircraft? The plane might go missing without a trace.