Shack at 02/05/14

Shack at 02/05/14

Thursday 31 July 2014

Waited until 15:27 to finally receive signals from B-64, which had circumnavigated the globe since it's launch on the 12th of July.  I was well inside the blue footprint long before 15:27 and starting to think there was something wrong with my equipment. Seems I am in some sort of rf hole as regards receiving from the West.  My Radar box AirNav also sufffers from accute deafness in that direction.  Anyway, finally made it. Mode Contestia 64/1000. Here's some screenshots





Sunday 27 July 2014




A few screenshots of today's flight EDUHAB4 . Seems to be a pattern to my successful reception now. Roughly green at around 8,000 metres and losing it over about 10,000.  Once balloon descends I regain contact around 10 again, and keep so until around 4 or 5000.  I believe this is  due to my Diamond X510N antenna having a low radiation patten.  This ties in with the fact that I can only decode the Funcube satellite at a low angle.  The simple white stick was better at near overhead Funcube passes, but the Diamond, with it's far better gain, despite the low angle, is more suited to balloon reception up country  I think.

Friday 18 July 2014

Well that was a damp squib yesterday. Thought I'd stay in and wait for SVC_PI to be launched, which would have have a camera on board.

It finally got airborne, much to the delite of the local school kids all lined up by their teachers at the launch site. This was live streamed. A screenshot on my HAB page.  Didn't mean to upload that, but forgot all screenshots are automatically uploaded due to my normally only taking shots on DL-Fldigi decoding telemetry from each flight.

Unfortunately, even though I was well inside the blue, then green footprints, I didn't manage to decode any pics or rtty from either  transmitters on board.  The signals seemed strong enough, but even though I played around with settings in case the published ones were altered, I had to give up when the balloon finally burst and the payload descended by parachute.

A disappointing day, but at least I had the screenshots to prove successful reception of the preceding flights over the last week..  Always the next one, which is EDUHAB3 Birmingham area.  No pics. rtty 50bd 8n2 on 434.540 usb.  Looking forward to that..

Tuesday 15 July 2014

21:14 and we're still hanging in there and decoding B-66

Checked on the off chance and found B-66 was well up.  Uploaded telemetry screen shot to page.

Screen shots of previous flights over the last couple of days


Thursday 10 July 2014

Morning all!. 07:23 and 'Sleet' still coming in nicely. Moving South West.

Wednesday 9 July 2014


Now receiving 'Sleet' RTTY 50 bd 7 bits.

Looking at 'Argo' qrss tracking with a view to auto uploading screenshots to the HAB page. Here's a shot showing pips, then HAB id and Contestia 64/1000 before I lose reception altogether.

Reckon I'm going to lose contact with B-63 real soon now. Right on the limit of it, footprint @13:50


07:56 Telemetry from B-63 heading South having just passed my qth.

07:29 and B-63 right overhead my location. Decoding again after losing contact late last night.

Tuesday 8 July 2014

19:04 and B-63 still coming through strong and roughly in the same area. Not much air moving to shift it by the looks of the map.


Just by chance I noticed B63 HAB was airborne so I tried to get set up to receive again. The diamond antenna was fed to the PCR-1000 as the audio was easier to run DL Fldigi on the same computer as HRD/PCR-100 was running. Unfortunately the PCR-1000 was deaf to the Contestia on 434.500, so back to the drawing board.

Running Sharp SDR and dongle on the lap top, so found the signal ok and fed it to the line in of the desk top computer so I could decode with Dl Fldigi from there.  As you see from the screen shots this was successfull.