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!

Field Day 2012 timelapses from the East Bay Amateur Radio Club and University of California, Berkeley’s W6BB Amateur Radio Club held at Cesar Chavez Park in Berkeley (adjacent to the Marina). These were shot over a 24-hour period from June 23rd, through June 24th, 2012.

We ran 3A, which means we had three main transmitters on the air at any given time, plus we ran the ‘Get On The Air’ (GOTA) station under the auspices of the W6BB club with Mathison, KJ6DZB mentoring. Our site had a Digital (PSK) station, a Phone station (SSB), and a Morse Code (CW) station.

Conditions were fine. Our main issue was having enough overnight operators, and our signals getting into one another’s. Results are still being (procrastinated by me) tallied. Will try and update with that info when it becomes available.

The entirety of this video was shot on a modified GoPro Hero 2 HD purchased at http://ragecams.com/ (I used the 4mm lens).
73 and stay tuned!

Jack, K6JEB
http://www.k6jeb.com/

This music is from the underappreciated Incredible Bongo Band – ‘Apache’.
http://www.youtube.com/artist/Incredible_Bongo_Band

This was a toroid I wound recently from a Hans Summers 160m MEPT kit. I figured I would demonstrate the ‘chopstick method’ for your edification and amusement.