Dale's Random Ramblings ;-)

Project Space Balloon has a balloon launch planned for this Saturday the 6th July 2013 from Bendigo Victoria.

Hi all,

FYI, our project team is planning to release a high altitude balloon from Bendigo this coming Saturday 6th July 2013 at 11am.

We will have an onboard camera sending images back via SSDV (http://ukhas.org.uk/guides:ssdv), which is basically broken up JPEG with some extra headers.

RTTY will be used for radio transmission.

We do not expect to recover the balloon, and will appreciate any assistance with getting data from the payload along the path, in Victoria, Southern NSW, ACT, and Tas. See attached expected path.

All you need is a radio capable of receiving SSB at 434.650MHz, and a Mac/Windows/Linux computer with sound card input and access to the internet. High gain antenna is highly desirable.

See instructions here: http://projectspaceballoon.net/ssd/

The other details are:

– Frequency 434.650Mhz (+-10Khz), USB

– RTTY with 460Hz shift, 300 baud, 8 bit ASCII, no parity, one stop bit.

– Hardware is a Rev A Raspberry Pi, with a 25mW UHF transmitter module.

– Antenna is a quarter-wave with radials.

– Expected “cruising” altitude is 20km.

You will be able to see the images on your computer if you can receive the RF signal directly.

If internet access is available the images can be uploaded to the internet for others to view.

Tracking (from distributed listeners like yourselves) will be available at http://spacenear.us/tracker Images will be available at http://ssdv.habhub.org

The call sign for tracking and SSDV is PSBPI.

We plan to have someone in #highaltitude chatroom on irc.freenode.net on the day to co-ordinate.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards.

Andy VK3YT

Reference:
Project Horus