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!
Balloon path
The balloon path was very similar to the predictions, but the landing was significantly west of Celina, Tx given the extra altitude (111,315 feet!) and the fast descent rate (the balloon was expected to decend for about an hour but actually dropped in around 15 minutes due to tangling – initial descent rate was ~10,000 ft/min! and didn’t slow significantly). Here is the actual trajectory (you can compare with the prediction below):
The before and after frames (after and before?) shot of the balloon burst (from the 360cam)
Moment of balloon burst (at 111,315 feet). Interesting ball of hydrogen gas after latex balloon exploded. The other white "ball of gas" is the sun
First image taken after Balloon launch
More info about balloon launch on Sept 21, 2024. Josh N4NZ captured drone video of the launch: