Tom SP9UOB launched a balloon earlier this week from Poland that is a long duration Pico balloon. It may be flying over Canada today and the Midwest tomorrow. 144.800 MHz FM APRS (possible bug in his

UBSEDS14 is three quarters of the way round the World. It is using AD6AM-11 for the APRS call when it is over the US and M0SBU-11 over the rest of the World. It also transmits on 70cm every 4 minutes.

I attended a talk from the FAA chief who deals specifically with things flying in the National airspace that are not pilot controlled. He presented a slide that showed that in the 70 years of flying f

I launched the 20m WSPR pico balloon at 2:55 pm CST. Had to resolder the magnet wire twice since it is so fragile and then I put some jumper wire on it to relieve the strain to the PC board and that h

After awakening shortly after sunrise, the Skytracker 5 (WB8ELK-6) pico balloon is flying directly over the center of Budapest, Hungary on its way through Poland and on to Sweden today. - Bill WB8ELK

Hello France !!!....Finally made it across the Big Pond with a Pico balloon. WB8ELK-6 on APRS.FI or Spacenear. - Bill WB8ELK

My new PC boards arrived this week so I decided to try out the new board with a flight test. This new board can be configured to do HF WSPR as well and I may launch that one tomorrow or sometime later

I use that earth.nullschool.net wind map a lot...you can select different flight levels to represent if you click on the lower lefthand corner of it. - Bill WB8ELK

You could also use the 1 Watt license-free 915 MHz 9XTend radios here in the US. They can give you high speed data downlinks. Either 9600 baud or 115.2k baud is possible with those radios. - Bill WB8E

I've been copying it on 30m WSPR quite often now that it is fairly close to the US. It just swung by the Caribbean as it amazingly traversed quite far into the Northern Hemisphere. I am also copying i

Sounds like it was something for the Global Space Balloon Challenge. Not aware of any middle Tennessee launches recently? Along that same lines, I noticed the KG4OBF flight that landed near Cape Canav

Forgot to mention that we won a 1600 gram balloon after submitting the report. Well worth the effort. - Bill WB8ELK

Yep...we participated two years ago and won 3rd place in our category. It was a fun competition and we plan to participate this year. - Bill WB8ELK Our group name: Rocket City Balloonatics

Beautiful day so decided to launch Skytracker 4. APRS callsign: WB8ELK-5. It transmits APRS packets on 144.390 and 144.340 MHz. 13.7 gram payload weight with 3.3 grams free lift. This flight is totall

I've flown the Iridium modem that I talked about and have shown at GPSL on about 40 flights now with great success. As Alan W7QO points out, there is a performance advantage to using a Helical antenna

Skytracker 3 (WB8ELK-4) floated at a very low 16,000 foot level all night long. It was launched just before sunset on Sunday afternoon at 4:05 pm CST from south of Huntsville, Alabama. The tiny 5 gram

Launch at 4:05 pm CST. This is the 3rd flight test of my new Skytracker APRS pico balloon payload. This time with a rechargeable LiPo pack as well as solar cells. Expect about 5 to 6 hours of battery

I didn't see my post come through on the list this morning so I'll repeat my suggestions here: Two issues come to mind: - GoPro Hero in the same box as the GPS....usually causes a great deal of desens

Hi Dennis, Two potential problems with your setup. The GoPro Hero camera is likely to desense the GPS antenna to point where it will not function if put inside the same payload. The second issue is th

Here's some of the things to watch out for: - Digital Cameras and GoPro cameras next to your GPS antenna. They can desense the GPS to the point where it will not track (better to have the APRS tracker