31/08/04 1542 Bit confusing at the moment. Looks like three flights imminent, but not much info. USBEDS2 Joey and Joey-B

Joey-B apparently transmitting alternate rtty and Turbohab modes, so I'll stick to rtty as I don't have the decoder for the latter

16:00 10 minutes 'ish to launch. The three payloads are on the same flight which will drift S/East, so will come well within my range.  16:34 and we're up and running. 16:52 Receiving red's from UBSEDS2 on 434.639 usb. (Height 2000 mtrs).. 16:54 Green decode @ 2077 mtrs. Waving a bit on waterfall.

17:00 Received Joey green @ 2,780 mtrs  on 434.612 usb.  18:25 UBSEDS1 Frequency drifting too much for AFC to track.-Too weak now. 11.000 mtres and drifting out to sea S/E of me. Could be a bad rf direction for me?.

UBSEDS2 was tx'ng rtty 50/420 8n2 and Joey rtty 50/560 7n2

18:39 Switching to EDUPIC1 on 434.650 usb 434.650 usb 50/380 8n2
19:00 away and weak on waterfall by 19:50-Reds at 3.400 mtrs and Green at 5,201 mtrs by 20:23

22:00 Still greens, but time for my beauty sleep so closed down.  All in all a good days HAB'ing

Good day for HAB'ing. 13:06 saw XABEN78: HL1, XABEN0 launched
HL1 on 434.250 and XABEN0 434.300  Both rtty 50bd 600 shift 7n1. However, XABENO was happier on 700 shift initially, then to gradually come down to 620

13:17 HL1 feint on waterfall and audio on phones.  13:20 HL1 Red  13:36 XABEN0 ||||Green
13:43Still not decoding HL1 at 11.764 metres.   13:53 HL1 now green at 14,238 mtrs.  14:00 Both payloads now loud and clear and green decodes. 14:50 now at 30,000 mtrs.  15:00 HL1 is descending by parachute.  XABENO still climbing  35,677 mtrs at 15:04.  15:12 Chute open at 38,744 mtrs and dropping like a stone 74.1 mtrs per second.  15:28 got my last green decode at 8,030 mtrs, then signal suddenly stopped. Apparently there was some sort of reset. Anyway I did briefly see feint waterfall trace before losing altogether.  Successful flight all round I think.

Finally got a green from B-66 at 10:03 pm local last night.  The one and only decode.  At last I could  go to bed happy *smile*.  Don't understand why the signal was so hard to detect as pretty close to the green footprint by that time.  Obviously the West and South are bad directions for me radio wise. Justas well all flights taking off are North of me, which seems to be my best area of reception.  Was poised to hit the Screenshot key soon as a green popped up, so here is the Spacenear.us map.  The DL Fldigi decode shot on HAB page of course.

This what I've got to contend with.  A local Echolink node right on top of B-66 frequency.

15:58 25/08/14 Notice B-66, another world circumnavigation, is approaching from the West. Now off the South West of Ireland. Should be here by this evening, so something to look forward to.  The other balloons on the map probably not getting airborne due to the inclement weather. never know your luck though. Someone might be brave enough to get wet lol B-66 is also on 434.500 so Murphies law says someone will fire up the Echolink repeater on that frequency at the wrong time.  Oh well, all part of the radio hobby I guess.

24/08/14  12:49 Saturday..Just switched on after getting home yesterday and picked up EDUPIC1 on (434.650 rtty 50/430 8n2).. Getting green decodes part apparently there is a telemetry fault so receivers not being shown on Spaceenear.us   

13:16 Now being shown on Spacenear.us as a receiver. All green now.

15:38 Now in green footprint Height 25.089 metres..

15:50 Decoding 'No GPS Lock' but at 15:56 back to normal decoding.

16:00 Noticed chute open.  Looks like a watery grave for this one. Off Gravesend.

25/08/14

Waited 3 hours for B-64 to reach me from central Ireland yesterday. Just got my first green decode when a strong fm signal kept coming up on 434.5 wiping B-64 out.  Pretty weird at first as I had 3 stations in qso at strength 59. One in Canada (VE6GFZ), one in USA (WA1ORB) and another in Birmingham (M6BRU)

However, after chatting to the guys on the Freenode.net, realised I was picking up a local Echolink Node that was transmitting on 434.525.  Eventually these guys went qrt and I managed a few more green decodes.

First screenshot shows the node signal. As you see, no chance of picking up B-64 through that..

12:42 local 16/04/2014. Waiting for ALMA-1 to take off from the Netherlands. (rtty 50/500 7n2  434.650 mhz) 13:00 balloon up and waited until 15:23 before detecting feint waterfall trace and audio on headphones.

Still weak at altitude 28.251 metres and I was now comfortably within the blue footprint. Expected to pop at 30.000 so not much chance of going green with this flight. Sure enough when the chute did deploy I had still not received clear data.  Win some loose some!.  On to the next....

Picked up G-06 from Exeter on the 15th. Just switched on on the offchance of something going on.
Couple of green's received just after 18:00, but although followed the flight until around 20:00 signals got progressively weaker until non existant  (rtty 300/470 7n2). Far as I could see from Spaceear.us I was the only station to go green. Screenshot here.

XABENO flew again today, along with the piggyback payload (HL1)  that failed to hold on tight yesterday on take off hi.  Decoding XABENO was relatively easy, but HL1 seemed much weaker and took a while before I managed to decode it.  Here are the related screenshots.

At last another balloon flight.  This one was called XABENO, launched from Elsworth Nr Cambridge. There was supposed to be two payloads. The Mothership on 434.300 mhz and a breakaway vehicle on 434.250

I received data (rtty 50/700 shift 7n2)  until 16:19 when the main  payload had descended by parachute to footprint limit range. I received no indication that the second payload had been operational. Screenshots follow.

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

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.

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..

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

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

Now receiving 'Sleet' RTTY 50 bd 7 bits.