Radio Balloon Launch

Story submitted by Chet Rolland AD5DM & Andrew J Koenig KE5GDB

The Richardson Wireless Klub will be launching a high altitude balloon this Saturday [Sept 21]! The tentative launch site is Aubrey Middle School in Aubrey TX (north of DFW by a few miles). Launch prep begins at 8:00AM and lift-off is 9:00AM. We expect the radio horizon to cover multiple states when our payloads are at the peak altitude of approximately 100,000ft.

There are several payloads of interest:

• DMR Repeater - 441.0 MHz / CC1 / TS1 / TG99 (single-frequency repeater -- configure your radio as if it were simplex)

• SSTV Transmitter - 433.5 MHz / Robot 36

• Wenet Digital Images - 431.5 MHz / 115.2kbaud -- see live images at https://ssdv.habhub.org/

• WA0VYU 6m Parrot Repeater - 52.525 MHz

• K5YR 20m WSPR Beacon

• K5UTD ADS-B Skimmer

• KD5OUG/W5LH Pi Pico Sensor Payload (K5RWK-11 / APRS 144.39)

All are invited to participate with the launch and the chase, or to simply enjoy the payloads from the comfort of your own shack. If nothing else I would recommend leaving your DMR HT on Simplex 1 (per https://dmrtexas.net/doku.php?id=repeaters:simplex-channels) and wait for voices from all over the West Gulf region to start being received. Tracking will be at https://amateur.sondehub.org (frequent updates with good telemetry), or via APRS with W5ADC-11 and K5RWK-11

There are a lot of mildly technical, receiver related projects that you can set up to receive the payloads in your shack. Something as simple as a Raspberry Pi and an RTL-SDR can receive live, digital images using Wenet. Your radio that can receive sideband at UHF (or RTL-SDR) can be used to decode telemetry with Horus GUI. There are several articles that outline how you can participate at: https://www.k5rwk.org/balloons (thanks KD4C!).

We hope to see you at the launch or hear you on the air!