Balloon Launch Saturday

[Jonathan Weaver]

The high altitude balloon launch is scheduled for Saturday, September
29th at 10:00 AM at Hoschton Park! I've confirmed with Jackson County
Parks and Recreation that we can use the park. They even want to put
pictures of the launch on their Facebook page!

The flight prediction shows the flight time will be around 2 hours and
50 minutes, and it should land near Royston after falling from a
maximum altitude of 21 miles. I've sent this information to the
Atlanta FAA office and plan to call them on Saturday morning prior to
launch.

As a reminder, the radio equipment includes:

1) APRS beacon transmitting the GPS coordinates on 144.390 MHz. You
can track the balloon at
https://aprs.fi/#!mt=roadmap&z=11&call=a%2FN4JWW-11&timerange=3600&tail=3600

2) A crossband repeater with an uplink of 445.650 MHz and an downlink
of 145.650 MHz. No PL tones are needed to use the repeater.

Note, the downlink frequency is moved from the last time as I
mistakenly used 145.250 MHz which is designated for use by repeaters
(particularly 145.250 MHz is the output frequency of the Toccoa
repeater, oops). 145.650 MHz is in the "experimental" part of the band
2 meter band, which is where I intended to be last time. 445.650 MHz
is a simplex frequency on the 70 cm band. It can be used for
repeaters, but I didn't see any on repeaterbook.

The payload also has two cameras and two temperature sensors. I hope
to get some good pictures and a little weather data as the balloon goes
up. Maybe I won't release it before attaching the payload this time!

I hope to see you on Saturday for the launch and feel free to join me
for the chase and recovery! I'm bringing my family, so feel free to
bring yours as well! It should be fun!

Jonathan Weaver
N4JWW

[Jonathan Weaver]

Here are the pictures from the balloon launch from September 29th! The
folders Camera1 and Camera2 are pictures taken by the balloon itself
during the flight. Enjoy!

https://1drv.ms/f/s!ApQOB_obnaxEhi0yJj9yZNCS1RqD

Jonathan