Is anyone out there “young” enough to remember that song title????
It seems that recently the “Balooning” groups are doing more and more with our hobby and also for our hobby…
I was recently assisting with the tracking of VE3KAR-11 which was a joint venture between Queens University in Kingston Ontario and the Kingston Amateur Radio Club.
Last November I was part of the chase team for VE3REX-11 which had the Perth ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) providing Communications support and tracking support for a local (Perth Ontario Canada) schools project. VE3REX-11 is scheduled to lift off again on Saturday April 19th and once again the Perth ARES will be assisting. If you are watching on the “Google APRS Site” look for the following callsigns:
VE3REX-11 will be the balloon
VE3BSB-9 will be one of the chase vehicles
VA3QV (yours truly) will be eastern recovery net control. Net control will be in Perth Ontario but if the balloon heads further east than Perth has good COMMS coverage for, control will be passed over to VA3QV to cover the area EAST of Ottawa. (Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City to the Maritimes and the US Eastern Seaboard)
As I type this the Spirit of Knoxville group (www.spiritofknoxville.com) is currently tracking a balloon with HF Data in what was supposed to be a trans atlantic flight. For reasons unknown at this time the balloon has not headed where they thought it was supposed to. It seems the balloon had an issue with freezing up and ice build up at altitudes and therefore drops with the increased weight. As it drops the tempeture warms up and the balloon gets lighter as the ice melts. As it is lighter the balloon rises and then ices up again…..A Viciious circle!!! This is just a guess at this time as they can’t tell till they find the balloon to check things out. The other problem is that at the altitude the balloon seems to be holding at the winds are not aiming to Europe so the flight is not heading in the directions planned. Amateur radio is the only form of tracking with the balloon beaconing on 30m RTTY. The tracking stations recieve the DATA from the RTTY Beacon and then uploads the data to the Server provided for the flight and then the server updates the website and shows the location and altitude on a map for all to see. I was part of this loop for 4 hours last nite (9pm Saturday to 1am Sunday am (ALL TIMES WERE EASTERN)) As of 9am Sunday morning its still up and running…Just not where we thought it was going….
There seems to be much more to do in our hobby that sit around and talk to your friends about your problems…
73bob
Tags: amateur radio
