Monthly Archives: November 2014

PS-29 APRS PICO balloon Melbourne Sydney

PS-29 was released at noon on 29/11/2014.

Solar powered party balloon, 50mW TX.
APRS only on 145.175Mhz.
Callsign is VK3YT-11

http://aprs.fi/#!mt=roadmap&z=12&call=a%2FVK3YT-11&timerange=86400&tail=86400

Prediction:

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Update #1 10:15 30/11/2014

Payload went into deep sleep when battery was low at 9:40pm AEST.
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Revised prediction shows the balloon went further east than expected

118510 trj001

PS-27 HF PICO balloon

PS-27 is in the air for further HF testing

Solar powered 25mW

WSPR on 30m (dial 10.138700Mhz) and 20m (dial 14.095600Mhz)

JT9 on 10.142000Mhz and 14.075000Mhz centre frequencies (dial 10.141000Mhz and 14.074000Mhz);

Prediction: NewImage

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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