Slashdot Mirror
Atlantic Crossing By Amateur Radio High Altitude Balloon
First time submitter StatureOfLiberty writes "The California Near Space Project launched a high altitude weather balloon from San Jose, California 4:00 PM local time Sunday afternoon (Dec 11). Over the past 3 days it managed to cross the United States and then the Atlantic Ocean. The balloon passed the coastline of Spain about 12:40 AM (US Eastern Standard Time) Wednesday morning (Dec 14). It has since popped and landed in the Mediterranean Sea. This is a huge accomplishment. The previous distance record was about 3,300 miles. This one traveled about 6,200 miles. Enthusiasts tracked the balloon via the web throughout most of the trip thanks to a ham radio technology called APRS which received data transmitted by the balloon and logged it to databases on the internet. Thanks to APRS stations around the world (some of whom changed their normal listening frequencies to help with the tracking process) data was available for most of the flight."
Oh, wait.
At least three days is a lot faster than eighty days.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
This submission read like a telegram.
The balloon passed the coastline of Spain about 12:40 AM (US Eastern Standard Time) Wednesday morning (Dec 14) [stop]
It has since popped and landed in the Mediterranean Sea [stop]
This is a huge accomplishment [stop]
The previous distance record was about 3,300 miles. [stop]
This one traveled about 6,200 miles. [stop]
I read another article on this (possible on The Register), and one of the shortfalls of the project as it turned out (i.e. going further than expected) seemed to be the lack of battery power for the transponder for attempts at a longer journey.
I wonder how much a nicely paired up solar panel would upset the lift/weight balance on a high altitude balloon, and whether it would be able to charge the batteries well enough to power a transponder over a longer trip.
Teamwork is essential. It gives the enemy someone else to shoot at
APRS is "Automatic Position Reporting System" per the creator. Wikipedia has the name wrong.
Why yes, I am a HAM. I hold a General ticket.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
popping a piece of garbage in the Mediterranean - how is that any success? would you please go out and fetch your items back from the sea
Upcoming launches at
http://www.arhab.org/ARHABlaunchannouncements.html
Also note that solely transmitting APRS is not the only thing ever done by balloons. Voice repeaters are very popular. TV transmissions both NTSC and slowscan are popular. Simple beacons in multiple frequency bands are popular. Digital telemetry, such as temp / pressure / humidity is sometimes done.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Where it was eaten by a whale or dolphin, which subsequently died.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It "POPPED"? (*cancels reservations*)
Absolutely! What plans to they have to recover this thing? What if it landed somewhere remote or inaccessible?
What's the environmental impact if they all want to do this? What about the toxic contents of the electronics and batteries?
What if it had come down in a populated area and harmed someone? What if an airplane collided with it?
It's insane to think about. This this has endangered countless animals and across two continents!
Why is this being celebrated? This is a disgrace and the people responsible should be fined and jailed!
UV is the showstopper as it is very intense above 100K, it was not expected to last more than a few hours in sunlight. They launched it (along with three others) late Sunday afternoon so most of eastward travel is done at night and figured the sun UV will deteriorate the latex following morning causing balloon to pop and land. Objective of two balloons (K6RPT-11 and -12) is distance. These were planned to be floaters (buoyant at 120K or so) but expect to only make it partway across the US, K6RPT-12 popped and landed in Indiana (some hams have tracked it down and will recover). But....... K6RPT-11 kept going throughout the day then crossed the coastline the next night and contact was lost over Atlantic. Then it was picked up the next morning from Azores, now hams on other side of pond got active on tracking this thing. It kept going, survived two days of UV but looks like it didn't survive the UV the third day.
There's ongoing discussion on QRZ (one claimed all kinds of laws were broken), http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?324759-Amateur-Radio-Balloon-crosses-the-Atlantic
You all has gots to admit this is one for the books!!!!!!!!!
Other two balloons K6RPT-12 and -13 were going for altitude record (CNSP achieved a record of 136,545 ft in Oct). These came down in west Nevada close to that shaded area of restricted airspace that has Tonopah Test Range and Groom Lake. Payload of K6RPT-13 is same as the record altitude setter from October and has signatures of CNSP members, I think they should have kept it and enshrined in a plexiglass pyramid. But I guess if it gets lost then may as well lose it in Area 51.
mfwright@batnet.com
&$)(! No one ever said i'd need to book a plane ticket to retrive my phone. It seemed easier in the commercial.
Hopefully, the balloon will not violate Iranian airspace; they will shoot it down, refuse to give it back, and clone it, and before you know it there will be 100s of "weather balloons"!
Soon, we'll have colonized near-space too!
Vendor lock-in is so much better, right? Go troll somewhere else.
The fact of the matter is that this is nothing but a dangerous publicity stunt for a dying hobby, carefully planned and perpetrated on the public to ensure that expensive radio equipment continues to change hands. Ham radio has no relevance in the modern era, and the recent increases in licensed hams are due only to extensive (and expensive!) marketing on the part of the equipment manufacturers. Countless lives were endangered by this reckless stunt, and the arrogant disregard for safety and environmental concerns makes it all the more apparent that the only goal here was publicity and nothing more. They should be ashamed.
I thought most larger balloons were neoprene, which is more resistant to ozone and UV. Metalized Mylar holds gas even better, but they cost more, and might anger various governments agencies.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
I operate a low-level iGate in Palo Alto, CA. It's built out of a WRT54G running aprs4r (Ruby) and using an Argent Data modem, based on an integrated design by Chris K6DBG.
I didn't hear the balloon directly, but I did hear it repeated from three mountain-top digipeaters (i.e., one radio hop away) and gatewayed the packet to the internet.
Here's the first packets I heard; the very first had a bad decode for most of it.
2011-12-09T17:13:02: K6RPT-13>APBL10,WR6ABD*,WIDE2:!????????/o?O???/???/A=109373
2011-12-09T17:15:06: K6RPT-13>APBL10,WR6ABD*,WIDE2,QAR,KG6HWF:!3715.25N/12153.29WO140/000/A=000193CNSP-13
2011-12-09T17:15:06: K6RPT-13>APBL10,WR6ABD*,WIDE2:!3715.25N/12153.29WO140/000/A=000193CNSP-13
APRS is based on AX.25 unproto, which is kind of the IP equivalent of UDP (as AX.25 is derived from X.25). It uses source routing, so you can see K6RPT-13 directed its packet at the "destination" APBL10, and the destination in APRS is usually a unique software identifier. That got picked up directly by WR6ABD on Loma Prieta mountain near Santa Cruz, CA. WR6ABD retransmitted it ("WIDE2" is a hope count for how to route over RF), and then gatewayed to the Internet ("QAR") by KG6HWF, and my WRT54G picked that up off the internet feed. The third line logs a packet I received directly and correcly from WR6ABD My WA5ZNU-10 iGate would have also done the same after the 3rd packet there.
At the risk of slashdotting this limited-resource site, I'll submit this aircraft APRS tracking site for a view of the entire track. Scroll down for tabular data showing groundspeed, altitude, etc. The Google map is zoomable and panable in the usual method as well as with a "Zoom" control in the lower left.
Four balloons were actually launched and an additional one crossed the Rockies but only one crossed the Atlantic. APRS tracks for the three other balloons are left as an exercise for the reader. Hint: they're K6RPT-12, -13, and -14.
--
Joe
I participated via a 2 meter repeater in a balloon launched in the Texas panhandle about three years ago. The launch mentioned here was quite a feat, but I believe the real fun to a launch is for hams to race around trying to retrieve the equipment once the balloon pops. The equipment is then parachuted back to earth. Hams then usually listen through a 2 meter and 70 centimeter repeaters systems in the area as to announcements from control operators as to where the parachute tracking radio is telling its whereabouts. There is usually a 10 meter (or other type) beacon aboard the launch pad whereby direction finding equipment can be used to pinpoint the exact ground location of the parachute's bundle of radios. On the launch i helped with, we were able to get hams very close to the equipment that lander in hilly ranch country. Just after they arrived, the 10 meter beacon batteries pooped and the equipment was never found. A pilot flew a grid of the area a few days later to no avail.
To see the entire trip go here, then zoom in and out to see various parts of the journey. The long blank section over the Atlantic is because there were no Amateur stations within the approx 400-450 mile line-of-sight radio range.
http://aprs.fi/?call=k6rpt-11%2C&date_start=2011-12-12%2000%3A00%3A00&date_end=2011-12-14%2009%3A56%3A33&mt=roadmap&z=3&timerange=604800&_s=sdr
This link will be good as long as the site retains the data - between 1 and 3 years.
The APRS tracker used was one from Big Red Bee.
Looks like you can buy your own balloons here:
http://www.amazon.com/30ft-Professional-Weather-Balloon-1200g/dp/B00513FWQI/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1324061812&sr=8-5
full DIY kits here:
http://www.projectaether.org/products.html