^^ Haha 
FrostedNipple: could you contact me on my email address in trust please? Thank you
FrostedNipple: could you contact me on my email address in trust please? Thank you
Lost Weather Balloon!
- Thread starter GeForce
- Start date
Associate
Burnsy, yes it is
We've notified numerous amateur radio clubs in the area, and I'm trying to get through to Lincolnshire police.
If anyone on this forum is around the area, the £50 reward for finding it still stands of course.
You may mean this anyway, but just FYI if it's anywhere near S****horpe/the surrounding area you actually want South Humberside police. It kept the old name.
Man of Honour
Haven't heard anything, seems very unlikely we will now 
There is still some hope, however! A writeup of the project can be found here: http://wiki.ukhas.org.uk/projects:apex-i
We are in the design process for version 2
There is still some hope, however! A writeup of the project can be found here: http://wiki.ukhas.org.uk/projects:apex-i
We are in the design process for version 2
Caporegime
Hopefully it didn't land anywhere near 'Dogdyke' in the top right hand corner of your first pic!
Commissario
Very interesting read, I didn't realise you were using AGWPE, I use that to interface my UI-View system with a Tiny-2 in host mode.
Soldato
So...if I want to disguise a bomb all I need to is write "harmless amateur radio experiment" on the side? 
Soldato
Haven't heard anything, seems very unlikely we will now
There is still some hope, however! A writeup of the project can be found here: http://wiki.ukhas.org.uk/projects:apex-i
We are in the design process for version 2
very interesting. Sorry you didn't find it.
How often was the camera setup to take photos??
I find it weird that the Balloon traveled so far when it had lost GPS tracking, i seem to remember when you first posted this that the Jet stream was heading in that rough direction would that be why it picked up over 100mph?
How high do you think it went in the end?
How High could that balloon type go?
May only get found once farmers start harvesting there fields? And even then it might get chewed up by the machinery
Have you got a map more zoomed in of where the last beacon was? or GPS Coordinates?
Last edited:
LOL
Great program isn't it? It saved us having to buy two expensive hardware terminal node controllers for the base stations. It also allowed a program one of the team members wrote to log packets and decode the avionics sensor data.
There's a more technical writeup here, if you're interested:
http://www.hexoc.com/wb/pages/balloon-project.php
So...if I want to disguise a bomb all I need to is write "harmless amateur radio experiment" on the side?
Yep, works a treat
very interesting. Sorry you didn't find it.
How often was the camera setup to take photos??
I find it weird that the Balloon traveled so far when it had lost GPS tracking, i seem to remember when you first posted this that the Jet stream was heading in that rough direction would that be why it picked up over 100mph?
How high do you think it went in the end?
How High could that balloon type go?
May only get found once farmers start harvesting there fields? And even then it might get chewed up by the machinery
Have you got a map more zoomed in of where the last beacon was? or GPS Coordinates?
The camera was set up on a servo mount, and it took a picture pointing down, then up, then across at the horizon, once per minute. Three pictures per minute in total.
When it travelled East, it was >70,000ft up, which is way above the altitude of the jet stream. The only thing we can put it down to is high altitude winds which neither we, nor the landing predication software, had accounted for.
Our highest confirmed altitude was 72,459ft, but from pressure readings and time of flight, we reckon it probably hit 90,000ft, possibly a bit over. These balloons are constructed for around 100,000ft burst altitude, but this depends on the weight of the payload, how much helium you put in, etc.
Zero pressure balloons maintain a near-zero pressure differential between them and their environment, so can reach much high altitudes. But there needs to be some electronic control of helium release, which adds to payload complexity and weight.
Yeh as I said, there's still some hope of finding it. After the upcoming exams, we're putting together version 2, which will be much lighter, smaller, cheaper and easier to find once it lands!
Soldato
I'm afraid i'm not any help at all, but this whole thing is really interesting. Good luck gettign it back. Would love to see whatever results it is you're trying to gather if you do get it back!
Also, the whole Scunthorpe word filter thing is hilarious.
Also, the whole Scunthorpe word filter thing is hilarious.
Man of Honour
Commissario
I am and I read it all, including the log page. When I first saw this I was wondering why you didn't do it on 2 and then it dawned on me about operating unattended during flight.
What about choosing a recognised APRS frequency on 70cms though? That way you can benefit from the network for easier tracking, although I'm not sure how active APRS is on 70cms.
Also I'm interested by the kit - You said you were able to change the receiver aerial but not the transmitter, so does that mean that you only changed the aerial at the base end or did you split transmit/receive feeds up in the balloon as well?
Oh and an error in your text.... "Packet radio has been around for nearly as long as amateur radio". No it hasn't. I've been using first Cambridge Packet on the BBC micro and then AX25 for over twenty years, but amateur radio has been around for far longer than that, not just slightly longer but a lot longer.
I'm looking forward to hearing about the refinements and version 2 so thanks for sharing this with us.
Soldato
Off topic, but Mik3: I tried to clean up your signature because it's driving me nuts!
Sorry for the interruption.
Sorry for the interruption.
Good luck with Version 2, keep us posted on it's progress.
Thank you! Version 2 (Apex II) information page at the following address. This is mainly for our own reference, it's just a page for idea collation at the moment:
http://wiki.ukhas.org.uk/projects:apex-ii
We did consider 70cms APRS, but this is still amateur radio frequencies and the license terms seem to forbid its usage for unmanned airborne ops. Having talked to the RSGB and Ofcom, it seems to be a bit of a grey area, however.
In the end we did change the transmitter antenna on the balloon. Both that, and the antennas on the vehicles, were eggbeaters. This gave us good horizon coverage with a nice even radiation pattern, whilst taking gain from -3dBm with the inbuilt antenna to around 6dBm with the eggs.
The system was half duplex, using 446 MHz for both the up and downlink. We never talked to the balloon during the flight - there was no need. The system worked perfectly under testing, though. In hindsight, we would have cut the balloon down as soon as the GPS lost satellite lock.
Thanks for pointing that out, I've now changed it
Apex II basically sets out to achieve the same goals - ie. high altitude photography. We'll be using just 10mW on 434.075 Mhz this time, to make use of a distributed listener set up for balloon flights used by most people in the UK who do this kind of thing.
The payload will broadcast on this frequency on both 50 and 300 baud RTTY once per minute. The payload will also carry ionising radiation detectors. We'll have a GSM mobile phone onboard, which will be controlled by the flight computer and made to text us GPS coordinates after landing.
If you'd like any more info or anything, post back.
Soldato
Very interesting. I'm assuming you needed to get CAA permission to launch this?
Thanks!
Yes we did. The specific department is the Airspace Utilisation Section (AUS) of the CAA. Very helpful chap there guided us through the process required for getting permission & made it very easy. The permission was valid for a 6 hour window at a certain location.
Associate
- Joined
- 4 Dec 2008
- Posts
- 1,812
Sadly I can't help as I'm ages away, but good luck with v2.
Commissario
Now that intrigues me again - 434.075 is within 70cms but I'm assuming the frequency is dedicated for this sort of thing, unattended airborne operation. I guess because 70cms is a shared band whereas 2m isn't that you can do this without any problem. Do you have to have a callsign attached to the RTTY or is that not needed? I ask that because I noticed you had a call on the beacons from Apex I as well as a beacon path
I used to use RTTY before the days of packet, I had a Creed 444 teleprinter like this:
Which drove an FDK Multi-700e:
And running 25 watts on 2m for long periods at a time (I wasn't a quick typist in those days) didn't half cause it to get hot! I remember typed conversations with friends that could last 20-25 minutes per over. I suppose thinking back that it when I was doing this that I taught myself to type.
RYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRY
CQ CQ CQ CQ DE G6... G6...
AR KKK
etc etc
Ahh, memories