PS-19 PICO balloon was released on Sat 30/8/2014
Party balloon, 10mW TX
APRS on 145.175Mhz, callsign VK3YT-12
Olivia 8/250 on 434.650Mhz, tracked on SNUS as PS.
http://spacenear.us/tracker/?filter=PS
Update #1 4pm 31/8:
Balloon went out of range in Bass Strait, heading towards NZ.
ETA is Tues night.
PS-18 PICO balloon is scheduled for release on Sunday 24/8/2014 at 8am.
Party balloon, 10mW TX
APRS on 145.175Mhz, callsign VK3YT-12
http://aprs.fi/#!mt=roadmap&z=9&call=a%2FVK3YT-12
Olivia 8/250 on 434.650Mhz, tracked on SNUS as PS.
http://spacenear.us/tracker/?filter=PS
Prediction shows the balloon will loop over Tas, VIC and NSW over several days.
PS-16 was released from Melbourne on 23/8/2014 at 8am
10mW TX, APRS only on 145.175Mhz, callsign VK3YT-11
Prediction:
Update #1: Last TX received at 7:18pm AEST
Prediction:
PS-16 was released from Melbourne on 12/8/2014, and took a different path from other PS flights: towards Adelaide, South Australia.
Details:
10mW TX, APRS on 145.175Mhz, callsign VK3YT-12
Olivia on 434.650Mhz, tracked on spacenear.us as PS.
As of 5:30pm the balloon was travelling very slowly towards Ararat.
Update #1:
Wow that was the first PS trip to Adelaide from Melbourne, and the furthest west a PS Pico balloon has travelled. It is not very common to see such unusual wind pattern.
Update #2:
PS-16 went in range Thurs afternoon
Prediction for the next few days:
Update #3: 7:30am Fri 15/8
PS-16 has done second pass of Adelaide and now will be heading back to Victoria
Updated prediction:
Update #4: 10:30am Sat 16/8
Looks like there were some changes in the wind pattern, the balloon did another loop around Adelaide
Update #5: 5:30pm Sat 16/8
The balloon landed and was picked up by Bob VK5FO and Ray VK5RR.
The payload was on the wet grass which killed APRS transmissions, but they did a great job with locating and retrieving the payload, using a combination of DF and software decoding to track the UHF signal. Thanks guys!
Final decoded packet:
PS-15 is a last minute release from Melbourne, with predicted path to NZ.
This is a non-solar payload, and APRS only.
10mW TX, APRS on 145.175Mhz, callsign VK3YT-9
Will switchover to NZ APRS frequency 144.575Mhz when payload is close to NZ.
Update #1, 6pm AEST
PS-15 went out of range at 4:56pm AEST.
Prediction shows the balloon will arrive around 6:30am local time tomorrow.
Update #1, 4:30am AEST
PS-15 arrived in NZ, first packet was received at 6:07:49am local time, 100km from the shoreline at Westport, NZ.
Range to first iGate ZL2SUN-3 was 200km, after the balloon cleared the Kahurangi national park
Update #2: Last packet was received at 8:24:03am local time (6:24:03 AEST) 142km from Christchurch.
Temperature was -42 degree Celsius before Sunrise, and climbed to -12 after Sunrise.
This was the fastest PS balloon trip to NZ so far, from Melbourne to NZ in 19H.
Total travelled distance 2998km
Average speed 157kph
