Predicted flight path for KK6PUZ-1 on Saturday March, 14, 2015

College Amateur Radio APRS aboard the Cal High Altitude Balloon Launch this Saturday 3/14 from the Main Glade – Come Join Us!

This Saturday around 12pm Pacific (1900UTC) as part of the “Pi Day” celebration (which will be STEM-focused) the Space Exploration Society at Berkeley will launch a High Altitude Balloon from the main glade at the Cal Campus.  The launch team is planning for the craft to attain an altitude of around 100,000 feet and at present the flight time will be around 3 hours (and then it will descend with an estimated touch-down at 2153UTC).  

Please feel free to pass this along to your friends, family, and associates!  Can you help spread the word?  🙂

AMATEUR RADIO ON BOARD

The balloon will have a GPS-enabled Amateur radio Packet Reporting System (APRS) tracker on-board transmitting at 144.390MHz (the national APRS frequency for 2m) using the callsign KK6PUZ-1 which belongs to Cal Planetary Sciences student Kareem Shaik.  So if you run an APRS iGate in the area from Berkeley to Copperopolis, or you’ve been looking for a good reason to set one up, get ready for Pi Day!

There will be other systems on-board for photography and telemetry.  You can also track the balloon while in-flight at the High Altitude Balloon Hub.

We could really use some help with tracking and recovering this balloon.  If you know people in the area, please invite them to participate as well.  We are still needing to pull together a few items, including the APRS antenna for the balloon as well as an antenna for the live video feed.

Here’s a chance to put many aspects of ham radio to use:

• APRS
• Fox-hunting
• Signal triangulation
• Mobile radio net
• Antenna modeling/building
• Batteries in extreme conditions
• Abiding by regulations including those of the FAA
• YOUR imagination !!!

UPDATE (20151110):  the balloon and its payload were safely recovered the day after the launch by Jason, KK6OQW who contacted us, and we drove out to Tracy to make the exchange.  The excitement in the chase vehicles was immense. It’s like geocaching, scavenger hunting, road-tripping, ham radio, mobile NASA Ground Control/Tracking, geekfest, physics-meets-poetry, BEYOND THE CLASSROOM. This is the sort of experience that imprints for life.Without further ado, here are the videos:

A photo Jason KK6OQW took of the SESB-1/KK6PUZ landing site.

The full flight in video:

 73 and Go (Cal) Bears!

OK, that was cool, and easy.  Using UISS by ON6MU, I was able to receive packets from the International Space Station for a few days on 145.825MHz.  This evening I was able to connect to the RS0ISS-11 packet BBS (and was quickly reminded it was for the CREW only [oops, sorry, QLF]).  Nonetheless, it was a valid round-trip QSO to and from the International Space Station.

Gear used:

I was using my Yaesu FT-857D at 50watts into a diagonally-oriented J-pole.  LOL.  This particular pass’s max elevation was 18 degrees.  This is so much easier than even trying to work the LEOs with voice!

Here’s a screen shot of the happenings:

I recorded this right off the air using my new
Quadrifilar Helix antenna from Antennas.us sitting about a foot above the ground (hi hi)outside. The one I got was with Right-Hand Circular Polarization (RHCP) and is rated for 50watts output.

This is a recording of the LUSAT-OSCAR 19 (website) CW beacon which was on 437.120MHz:

LUSAT-OSCAR 19 20081123 1615UTC

Then Cubesat OSCAR-57 flew over:
cubesat-oscar_57_20081123_0153utc

The highlight of the evening was two AO-51 QSOs with W6BVB and WD9EWK! The Quadrifilar Helix antenna works!

I need to mount it high up. I could tell the house was in the way based on the angle and elevation and sudden drop on where the house is. Otherwise I believe I picked-up AOS at around 15 degrees elevation, which is quite right from the ground in the back yard and with the tall trees in that direction. I’m very happy! I was using 50 watts into a 5/8 vertical for my output on 2m.

I keep coming back and updating this blog entry with more sounds I record from this antenna. What a blast this has been. It’s like someone tore open a hole into space so I can actually hear. Here’s some Morse telemetry from RS-22 (website):
RS-22 20081123 0625UTC

For software, I’m tracking the satellites with Orbitron. Once I decide which bird to track, I switch over to the Ham Radio Deluxe Satellite Tracker which comes as a part of the awesome Ham Radio Deluxe suite; this I use for frequency control. I’m still mastering the linear inverting transponder for VO-52 but I have already successfully tuned-in a couple passes already; seems to be an active bird.