Lost Contact With Balloon, Looking For Listeners.

somewhat. Not the traditional like 144.39 2 meter packet type of aprs. but an HF version that does the exact same thing except using RTTY. thats where the screen shot came from.

Joe

 

Off topic but maybe you should have used some sort of OCXO to heat the crystals and heat sensitive components just enough to keep them reasonably stable.
Using standard power resistors and a well insulated container, the power consumption should only be a few watts.

 

A few watts on these payloads is a LOT of power. Especially in this flight where the design was for long endurance. For all we know it still could be floating along in the -55 deg C at 70K feet.

Joe

 

Did you use mylar or anything like that to keep it warm (well trap the heat in produced by everything.)? Would listen if I could, sorry you lost your balloon those things are expensive.

Something like this might work https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11289 (.7a@5v, 3.5 watts). I know that every watt (and pound) counts but, maybe another balloon & extra solar cell might be a good idea if you lose these things do to the cold.

 

I live in Rockford, and have passed this on to a bunch of local hams to see if any of us could be of assistance... I hope you can find your lost equipment.. Good luck

 

I listened last night for a while... I did hear a signal fade in and out, but I believe it was lower on the waterfall than described. I saw one strong RTTY signal come in, but I wasn't able to decode. There was also a very wide digital signal transmitting once every five minutes or so. I didn't recognize the mode... so now I've got a new search.

Good luck!

 

I've never seen a balloon launched without a traditional APRS tracker installed to aid in recovery.

...DOUG
KD4MOJ

 

It appears that this launch was no different.

 

We have been doing these flights for 25 years. Longer than when GPS's were even around. probably 50% of our flights were strictly a RDF "FoxHunt" recovery method. because APRS did not yet exist.

In addition what was on this payload was an APRS type of system, but instead of being on a VHF or UHF frequency, where it is only line of sight signal possibilities, this was on 30 meters where we have both Line of sight as well as the highest digipeater there is, the Ionosphere! So even if no one is in the direct line of sight footprint, anyone in the skip windows can also hear it and they did.

The failure would have been no different with a traditional APRS system, night time flights get extremely cold it was -55 deg C outside and -47 deg C inside at the time it stopped transmiting. a traditional 144.39 would have done no better.

Joe WB9SBD

 

It sounds as if time was slowing down on board the craft and that dopplar effects were becoming more evident. I suggest that the balloon is nearing the speed of light and may be beyond the solar system and any hope of recovery at this point.

 

Warp Speed Scottie!

 

WB9SBD, well sir, from my vantage point near the North End of Saginaw Bay, I was hearing some form of RTTY transmissions. However Fldigi was not decoding the signals for me so I do not know if I had your bird or not. Keep trying, I wish for more advance warning to be able to help.

From the temps you are discribing I feel that the batteries froze, would big caps work better?

 

The dl-fldigi page states that a compiled version of the tracking software isn't available for Windows. The downloaded "readme" files states: "To build dl-fldigi you will need to cross compile from linux - the build scripts can be found here: http://github.com/danielrichman/dl-fldigi-windows-build." So, if we have regular old fldigi, then we can just e-mail you any recovered data?

 

However the FlDigi I am using was running on Puppy Linux.

 

Sorry! I should've added I'm using the Windoze version of fldigi.