Tracking High Altitude Balloons is FUN! But you need to have a decent position to receive the signals. Normally, when at work or at the Delfi-C3 ground station, I have full tracking yagi’s available. But at home I am still constrained by lack of permission to put anything on the roof. So what to do?

Use the car as ground plane!

Details of the flight:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3697

One of the images received:

You have got to use something to get rid of the energy….

During testing, I switched FUNcube to safe mode and watched the bus current go down. Recommended display is big :)

Luckily the power supply range is wide!

Today, during some after work hours, I have tested my small amplifier board.
It is based on minicircuits’ PSA-545+ and boasts about 20dB of gain, an IP3 of +20dBm, and NF = 0.8dB. Lets see of this is in line with reality…

Yes, I know, the analyzer was not calibrated! no need to do that for a first test!

Although the analyzer has USB support, I did not have a drive/port/stick/key with me. By the way, how did they come up with so many names for USB flash drives!

Today, I have received two more Tranzeo TR-5a-20w’s

These are usually broken and marked as such. Because they were used in security business, they will not be repaired, even if this is fairly simple. Just because the company that is giving them to me does not find it economically viable, and does not want any downtime on the camera’s.

The last batch of thee contained one that was coming down from a lamp post after a car accident knocked the lamp post down. Result: the Wireless Card Slot ruptured off during impact. This card fixed one of them that had a broken radio, so I now have another set ;)

Tracking high altitude balloons is a lot of FUN. Helium filled balloons are fitted with a small payload transmitting telemetry back down to earth. These balloons can reach altitudes of 35km, depending on the filling level and type of balloon.

Today, one was released by a local club of HAB enthusiasts and I tracked it using a moderate setup on the balcony

Using DL-FLDIGI to decode the signals and uplink them to the internet.

I have successfully received STRaND-1 and AAUSAT3 on the 19:10 UTC pass.

STRaND-1 was nice and loud.

Please find more about them at http://www.sstl.co.uk/Missions/STRaND-1

and

http://www.space.aau.dk/aausat3/