Latex Balloon Launch Scheduled for Tomorrow

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We’re just preparing a 150g latex up/down balloon for launch tomorrow. PecanPico 9  tracker with camera. 1k2 telemetry, position and low resolution pictures via APRS (144.800 MHz AFSK). High resolution pictures (1024 x 768 px) on 144.860 MHz 9k6 GFSK APRS. Launch is planned for about 1000 UTC from Berlin. Prediced track to the Polish border.

The following experimental map displays the taken pictures from the down camera at the locations where the pictures where taken. We are also implementing a logging method to improve the resolution of old positions that may not have been received directly.

http://dl7ad.duckdns.org

Update:
Here are some pictures from This flight:

Pecan Pico 9 Floater on SBS-12

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Sven (DL7AD) has improved the Pecan Pico 9 design so that we can now use the much better OV5640 camera. We decided to use the good weather to launch our SBS-12 balloon and we prepared a solar powered payload with only supercaps. This doesn’t allow operation at night, but it’s sufficient to power everything including camera and picture transmissions during the day. This way the problematic LiPo batteries are avoided which cause problems at very low temperatures.
After a catastrophic launch (see video), everything worked fine. The pictures are transmited with 2x redundant packets through APRS and then forwarded to the SSDV server. We have some nice pictures coming down.

Payload weight: 17.45 g
Balloon hull: 92 g
Free lift: 8 g
Callsigns: DL7AD-12 (Telemetry, APRS); DL7AD (ssdv QVGA); DL4MDW (ssdv VGA)

Links:
SSDV: DL7AD (QVGA); DL4MDW (VGA)
APRS: DL7AD-12; telemetry
Pecan Pico 9: GitHub
Launch video: YouTube

 

 

Pecan Pico 9th Generation

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I’m glad hat Sven (DL7AD) was able to use revive Pecan balloon tracker project for his master thesis. He has just started the development again with the focus on cost efficiency and easy production. The first Pecan Pico 9 PCBs arrived yesterday and we’ve immediately build up the first batch of 3 trackers. Sven has documented the Pecan Pico 9 version in depth at his GitHub.

HamRadio Exibition

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A few impressions from the HamRadio 2016 in Friedrichshafen. The spiderbeam antenna behind my VW camper unfortunately belongs to the neighbor 🙂

The Kenwood TH-D72 radio will have a successor. It’ll become available end of 2016. Added features are D-Star, SSB (rx only), color display, 220 MHz option (probably not in Europe).

Sometimes I’m thinking that if I didn’t spend my money on all the cheap radios and parts, I might have been able to afford a Hilberling already.

 

 

Grossfunkstelle Nauen

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I recently passed by the first and biggest commercial radio station Nauen in Germany (not far away from Berlin). From here the first German trans-atlantic contacts were made. The hight of each of the four rotating antennas is 80.5 m (264 ft). There is a smaller rotating antenna nearby which seems to be out of order, but you can have a closer view at it.