[Vk5-wx-sonde] [HORUS] Possible Not-So-High-Altitude Balloon Launch 1st/2nd August

[Mark Jessop]

Hi all,

Next weekend there may be a balloon launch out of Buckland Park, for the
University of Adelaide's Physics department. This launch will be carrying a
world-first laser holography based ice particle sensor developed by a UofA
PhD student, amongst other atmospheric sensors.

This launch is *highly* dependent on weather, in the reverse sense to a
usual Project Horus launch. The desire is to spend as much time as possible
*within* cloud, so this launch will only be conducted if the weather is
overcast.
Once the payload has ascended above the cloud layers (confirmed via Wenet
imagery, expected to be ~10km altitude) the flight will be terminated and
the payloads recovered.

The actual launch time will be confirmed later in the week, but will be
either Saturday or Sunday morning. Again, this is highly dependent on
weather.

Launch is from the UofA's Buckland Park research site, and so is
unfortunately a closed launch, however you can help out from home by
tracking the telemetry that will be transmitted on the 70cm band.

The current telemetry transmissions are expected:
- Horus Binary (4FSK) - 434.660 MHz USB
- Wenet Imagery - 443.5 MHz  (TBD, may change)

If you haven't tracked telemetry from a balloon flight before, this is a
good one to get started with! (though note that the flight may be quite
short)
Information on decoding the Horus Binary telemetry is available here:
https://github.com/projecthorus/horusdemodlib/wiki#how-do-i-receive-it
Note that there has been a move to a new standalone user interface for
decoding, which should be somewhat simpler to setup for new users.
If you have a decoding setup working using FreeDV, it should still remain
compatible for some time, but note that newer versions of FreeDV will not
decode the Horus telemetry.

Decoding the Wenet imagery is a bit more involved, with a guide here:
https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet/wiki/Wenet-RX-Instructions-(Ubuntu-Debian)

If you have any issues getting the software going, please let me know via
e-mail ( vk5qi at rfhead.net ).

73
Mark VK5QI
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.vk5fo.com/pipermail/vk5-wx-sonde_vk5fo.com/attachments/20200726/0b8a0f89/attachment-0001.html>