Author Topic: Re: New Balloon cruising at 120 at the moment (Read 45398 times)

DaveBev · « **on:** April 12, 2016, 12:51:50 pm »

I attached a radio to a couple of party balloons and they are looping around Greenland at the moment at over 100mph.
You can see the map here: http://qrp-labs.com/ultimate3/ve3kcl-balloons/ve3kcl-s9.html
Dave

German_EE · « **Reply #1 on:** April 12, 2016, 05:12:08 pm »

OK, that's cool

botcrusher · « **Reply #2 on:** April 12, 2016, 08:21:20 pm »

That's really cool!

DaveBev · « **Reply #3 on:** April 13, 2016, 12:03:23 pm »

An Update:
The solar radio just woke up about an hour ago near Iceland and is sending telemetry every 12 minutes or so.

MrSlack · « **Reply #4 on:** April 13, 2016, 12:07:42 pm »

Very cool - thanks for posting!

Will watch this avidly.

rrinker · « **Reply #5 on:** April 13, 2016, 12:36:56 pm »

Very neat!

German_EE · « **Reply #6 on:** April 15, 2016, 12:50:35 pm »

Welcome to Europe! I know that you are running a QRP transmitter on the balloon but please could you provide some more detail about how you transmit and receive the telemetry?

Also, do micro transmitters like this come under C.E.P.T. ?

ciccio · « **Reply #7 on:** April 15, 2016, 01:34:02 pm »

When I was a child I've dreamed about building something similar, but technology was not available.

Congratulations, and thank you very much for sharing.

TinkerFan · « **Reply #8 on:** April 15, 2016, 01:36:06 pm »

I've been following it for a few days now.

It would be really interesting to see how it follows different streams. above the Atlantic ocean.

ANTALIFE · « **Reply #9 on:** April 15, 2016, 02:24:44 pm »

Super neato

macboy · « **Reply #10 on:** April 15, 2016, 02:31:49 pm »

This is very interesting. I am impressed by the duration and distance of this flight.

I think that most of us on this forum want to more about your payload. I see an Arduino mini and I assume a GPS module. I like the use of thin enameled wire to reduce weight. How does it transmit its telemetry data, and who is receiving it?

Maybe before flight S-10, some brilliant people here could help you reduce your nighttime power consumption so that you could send telemetry at least a few times to get better tracking over night.

DaveBev · « **Reply #11 on:** April 16, 2016, 09:59:00 pm »

Hi
The Balloon is powered down now, but there is a possibility it could be transmitting as early as 03:30 UTC April 17th... when it powered down a while ago, it was just off the coast of Turkey and will possibly start transmitting telemetry after sunrise tomorrow in Iraq.
The telemetry method is explained if you look on the index for S4 to the left of the map page. http://qrp-labs.com/ultimate3/ve3kcl-balloons/ve3kcl-s9.html
Basically the transmitter sends out a regular 2 minute wspr transmission... (google it if you are not familiar with that term) then it sends a 2 minute wspr telemetry report. The telemetry is folded into the wspr format so it looks like a wspr report. This method will allow the decoding of up to 20 different channels or balloons at the same time. Telemetry could be any items you want, but in this case it is speed , more accurate maidenhead indicator, altitude, on-board temperature, battery voltage and a few bits for gps reception.
It is all explained on the web page... there are some cool toys there too.
Dave

MrSlack · « **Reply #12 on:** April 16, 2016, 10:23:18 pm »

If it goes any further south it'll probably get shot down

Psi · « **Reply #13 on:** April 16, 2016, 11:46:04 pm »

Unfair

I want to fly my RC plane at 10020m, but ~~have to~~ should obey the 100meter limit

ez24 · « **Reply #14 on:** April 17, 2016, 02:06:58 am »

Thanks it is interesting

apelly · « **Reply #15 on:** April 17, 2016, 07:08:04 am »

Was about to ignore this thread as click-bait. Glad I didn't! Thanks mate.

German_EE · « **Reply #16 on:** April 17, 2016, 07:55:28 am »

Your balloon passed right over Lake Constance on the German/Swiss border which is one of the busiest air traffic areas in Europe, well done on surviving that one!. This is fascinating and I'm wondering where the balloon will end up next, south to Africa or east to India?

After the flight an article in one of the ham radio magazines or maybe here or on Eham.net would be appreciated.

Kilrah · « **Reply #17 on:** April 17, 2016, 08:08:27 am »

Very interesting indeed! I've followed several high altitude projects/launches but always go up, pop and fall down over the course of a few hours with a rather well predicted trajectory, never knew there were long range/duration experiments.

What's the regulation around those? Can you jsut throw anything up as long as it's lighter than X? Feels kinda surprising you can have something wandering around uncoordinated right in the middle of where airliners fly.

crispy_tofu · « **Reply #18 on:** April 17, 2016, 08:11:53 am »

That is very cool, thanks for sharing!

DaveBev · « **Reply #19 on:** April 18, 2016, 04:29:19 am »

Hi
An update.... the Balloon just woke up in Turkmenistan and is heading for Uzbekistan.. yesterday there was a problem with the gps not handing off the data to the transmitter... so we used the wind plot to figure out the direction of the balloon. http://qrp-labs.com/ultimate3/ve3kcl-balloons/ve3kcl-s9.html

To answer your question about aviation worries.. the payload including antenna weighs less than a house sparrow and is wrapped in insulating foam.
Some birds that weigh 20 times more, regularly fly over the Himalayas at 28000' and there is a vulture that can fly up to 37000 feet .. amazing
Weather balloons have never caused an accident in aviation since they were first used, and over 400000 of these balloons carrying a transmitter of a 250gms weight (over 10 times heavier than a sparrow) are launched every year.
Weather balloons expand to 16' sometimes but even in launch size, weather balloons are about 10 times bigger than the party balloons I launched.
The antenna on the balloon is designed to fail at 3lbs pull in case it catches on anything. The solar cells are so fragile that they shatter on contact with any object... I have done this a few times by mistake.
I cannot see any danger to commercial aviation that could be worse than a bird strike with a small sparrow. A Boeing that can weigh over 500000 pounds, would not be hurt even if it managed to find a balloon to hit... and that is probably one chance in a million.
Dave

Fulcrum · « **Reply #20 on:** April 18, 2016, 05:18:31 pm »

This is a really cool project. Thanks a lot for sharing.

CatalinaWOW · « **Reply #21 on:** April 18, 2016, 05:31:27 pm »

Quote from: DaveBev on April 18, 2016, 04:29:19 am

Hi
An update.... the Balloon just woke up in Turkmenistan and is heading for Uzbekistan.. yesterday there was a problem with the gps not handing off the data to the transmitter... so we used the wind plot to figure out the direction of the balloon. http://qrp-labs.com/ultimate3/ve3kcl-balloons/ve3kcl-s9.html

To answer your question about aviation worries.. the payload including antenna weighs less than a house sparrow and is wrapped in insulating foam.
Some birds that weigh 20 times more, regularly fly over the Himalayas at 28000' and there is a vulture that can fly up to 37000 feet .. amazing
Weather balloons have never caused an accident in aviation since they were first used, and over 400000 of these balloons carrying a transmitter of a 250gms weight (over 10 times heavier than a sparrow) are launched every year.
Weather balloons expand to 16' sometimes but even in launch size, weather balloons are about 10 times bigger than the party balloons I launched.
The antenna on the balloon is designed to fail at 3lbs pull in case it catches on anything. The solar cells are so fragile that they shatter on contact with any object... I have done this a few times by mistake.
I cannot see any danger to commercial aviation that could be worse than a bird strike with a small sparrow. A Boeing that can weigh over 500000 pounds, would not be hurt even if it managed to find a balloon to hit... and that is probably one chance in a million.
Dave

I agree with everything you have said here. But if you posted your project on an aviation website, particularly an airline pilots website you would receive more abuse than you could possibly believe.

MrSlack · « **Reply #22 on:** April 18, 2016, 05:52:27 pm »

They are a bunch of whiners according to a commercial pilot friend of mine or "plane supervisor" as he titles the job as it pretty much flies itself.

DaveBev · « **Reply #23 on:** April 18, 2016, 06:05:34 pm »

Hi

Also there is some Intrigue here as to why the gps went blank and did not work yesterday over Syria Iraq and Iran

Some think it may be electronic countermeasures to discourage non mil-spec gps's from directing munitions and other bad stuff accurately to their targets in that area... The gps woke up like nothing was wrong at sunrise, this morning, in Turkmenisan. Today it flew over the Russian space port called Baikonur Cosmodrome... their equivalent to Cape Canaveral.

Dave

MrSlack · « **Reply #24 on:** April 18, 2016, 06:08:06 pm »

Possible and an interesting idea. It's easy to locally jam GPS which is one reason why they turned off the whole selective availability thing. The signal at ground is very weak.


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Author Topic: Re: New Balloon cruising at 120 at the moment (Read 45398 times)

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