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PS-52 HF PICO balloon WSPR JT9

PS-52 was released at 20:40 5 Sep 2015 UTC

Solar powered party balloon, 25mW TX
TX WSPR, JT9 on 30m and 20m

Dial frequency 10.138700Mhz and 14.095600Mhz (standard WSPR dial frequencies) for WSPR, JT9.
JT9 at 1000Hz offset.

See HF decoding info at http://picospace.net/?cat=34

Tracking as PS-52 on SNUS http://picospace.net/tracker/new
WSPR call sign is VK3ANH http://wsprnet.org/olddb?findcall=vk3anh

Prediction:

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TX scheduling
Minute – Band – Mode – Condition
:00 – 30m – 2 mins WSPR then two x 1 min JT9 – mandatory
:10 – 20m – 2 mins WSPR then two x 1 min JT9 – if batt full
:20 – 30m – 2 mins WSPR then two x 1 min JT9 – if batt full
:30 – 20m – 2 mins WSPR then two x 1 min JT9 – mandatory
:40 – 30m – 2 mins WSPR then two x 1 min JT9 – if batt full
:50 – 20m – 2 mins WSPR then two x 1 min JT9 – if batt full

Update #1 8 Sep 2015

After being tossed around for a few hours by a rough weather front that caused rapid altitude changes of the payload in the Southern Ocean, PS-52 went down on Monday night, 4000km from the nearest tracking station ZL1RS in NZ.

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PS-38 HF PICO balloon WSPR JT9

PS-38 PICO balloon was released at 6:20AM Sat 14/3/2015 AEST.

Solar powered party balloon, 25mW TX
WSPR, JT9 on 30m and 20m

Dial frequency on 10.138700Mhz and 14.095600Mhz (standard WSPR dial frequencies) for both WSPR and JT9.

See HF decoding info at http://picospace.net/?cat=34

Tracking as PS-38 on SNUS http://picospace.net/tracker/new
WSPR call sign is VK3YT http://wsprnet.org/olddb?findcall=vk3yt

Prediction
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Update #1 9am Sun 15/3/2015

PS-38 flew past Sydney last night and is currently off the coast of Brisbane.
It will be heading South East shortly towards New Zealand, with the expected ETA around 13:00 UTC.

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Prediction:

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The bad news is PS-38 will be heading straight into Cyclone Pam.

From NZ MET Service,

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We will be watching closely tonight.

Update #2 6pm 15/3/2015 AEST
PS-38 approaching cyclone Pam

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Update #3 9pm 16/3/2015 AEST
PS-38 survived last night, but went down tonight after crossing the international dateline.

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Pebble Watch Apps for Picospace balloon tracking

I have written a little App for the Pebble Watch to assist with tracking of PICOSPACE balloons, starting with PS-30.

The watch displays the time from last telemetry, lat, long, altitude, speed, battery voltage and solar voltage.

The data is polled from picospace.net (via the phone) every two minutes. You will need internet connectivity from your phone (3G or Wifi).

If new telemetry is received after 30 minutes from last telemetry the watch will also vibrates.

Pebble hab

The screen shot show PS-30 was heard from 7 hours 14 minutes ago, at 9697m, and speed of 216kmph.

Click this link from your phone to install the Pebble Watch Apps

HAB_ALERT.pbw

HF decoding

Picospace HF payloads send telemetry data using standard JT9 packets.

WSJT-X software has been modified to allow upload of JT9 telemetry from balloons to SNUS (spacenear.us) website.

The software can be downloaded here:

Tested version 1.5.0-devel:

Windows Installer

Source file

Version 2.1.2

Windows Installer

Source file

Version 2.2.1

Windows Installer

Source file

The modified software adds two options on the main page:

* Telemetry: selecting this will allow packets to be uploaded to to server

* Location: selecting this will send your grid square to be displayed on SNUS map

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Some important parameters for the software setup:

* The frequencies will need to be set to the standard WSPR dial frequencies:

30m: 10.138700Mhz

20m: 14.095600Mhz

This will put WSRP in the standard 1400Hz-1600Hz audio band, and JT9 at somewhere outside of the WSPR segment, typically at 800Hz/1000Hz/1200Hz/1800Hz, depending on flights. Please see flight announcement for the JT9 offset.

This allows simultaneous tracking of multiple balloons at the same time.

Please note the software will decode multiple payloads automatically with no special settings, ie. if the setup can decode one payload it will decode multiple payloads. You just need to have the correct dial frequency and time synchronisation.

Quick setup guide:

* Mode should be JT9. The “JT9 AND JT65” mode expects the different signals are in different parts of the audio bandwidth and is not recommended.

* Add your callsign and grid square in the settings for the “Location” option to work

* Enable Location and Telemetry options to allow upload of your grid square and telemetry data.

* WSPR/JT9 starts transmitting at the beginning of the scheduled minute, so the computer will need to have the time synced to a time server on the internet.

The software behaves like a standard WSJT-X version otherwise, and can be used for standard QSOs.

The positions of the balloons are displayed on SNUS tracking page spacenear.us which can be accessed through the Tracking shortcut at the top of this web page.

A big thank you to the UKHAS guys for making SNUS available to the HAB community.

The balloon transmission usually starts with two minutes of WSPR transmission, and followed by 2x one minute JT9 messages, at minute 00, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50.

This might be changed to accomodate multiple balloons.

WSJTX can also decode WSPR when running as a separate instance..

Two instances of WSJTX software can be run at the same time, by specifying the -r option on the command line.

One instance can be used to decode WSPR  and one to decode JT9.

C:\WSJT\wsjtx\bin\wsjtx -r WSPR

PS-25 and PS-26 HF PICO balloons

PS-25 and PS-26 PICO balloons were released on Sat 22 Nov 2014, testing out multiple balloon tracking with JT9 and WSPR.

Solar powered 10mW TX HF payloads transmitting JT9 and WSPR with frequency offset of 400Hz for JT9 and 100Hz for WSPR, they could be tracked simultaneously with the modified WSJTX software.

Tracked on SNUS as PS-25 and PS-26.
Callsign on JT9 is VK3YT, and callsigns on WSPR are VK3YT and VK3ANH

TX time and frequency schedule:

0 30m // Mandatory JT9 and WSPR, two per hour
6 30m // Optional JT9 – bat full
10 20m // Optional JT9 and WSPR – batt low
16 20m // Optional JT9 – bat full
20 30m // Optional JT9 and WSPR – batt low
26 30m // Optional JT9 – bat full
30 20m // Mandatory JT9 and WSPR, two per hour
36 20m // Optional JT9 – bat full
40 30m // optional JT9 and WSPR – batt low
46 30m // Optional JT9 – bat full
50 20m // Optional JT9 and WSPR – batt low

Decoding software

Windows installer:
http://picospace.net/wp-content/uploads/files/wsjtx-1.5.0-devel-win32.exe
Source files:
http://picospace.net/wp-content/uploads/files/wsjtx_src_1.5_devel.zip

Update #1 6:30pm

Multi tracking was working well, but PS-26 landed in the Tasman sea shortly after leaving the coastline.

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PS-25 is still heading East towards NZ. SNUS callsign is PS-25, and WSPR callsign is VK3ANH.

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WSPR map for PS-25

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