Nashua Area Radio Society Newsletter Articles. You can find an archive of our Newsletters on our website.
One of our own, Abby AB1BY appeared on Ham Nation on Wednesday, October 25th. The show including Abby’s interview was streamed live over the Internet. Gordon West, WB6NOA, interviewed Abby. You can view Abby’s Interview (about 3:22 in from the beginning) below:
Abby was quite a hit during her Ham Nation debut. The chatroom activity associated with her segment was off the charts! Gordon has invited Abby back to do a monthly segment on Ham Nation. Stay tuned!
Fred, AB1OC
We flew our High-Altitude Balloon for the second time this past weekend. Our second High-Altitude Balloon Flight (HAB-2) was part of a STEM learning project that we did with STEM club students at Bishop-Guertin High School in Nashua, NH. The students did all of the flight prep and launched HAB-2 at approximately 11 am ET from a school in Winchester, NH. Parents, teachers and local students joined us for the launch as did several members of our HAB team.
Our students and many Hams were able to track HAB-2 during its flight via APRS. HAB-2’s actual flight path prediction matched our modeling quite well.
The direction and shape of the path were almost the same as what our model predicted but the flight took longer and went higher than we expected.
We broke our previous altitude record by A LOT! The balloon burst west of Rochester, NH at just short of 118,000 ft! HAB-2’s final altitude was about 400 ft higher than the last APRS burst shown above. This is more the 25,000 ft higher than our last flight!
HAB-2 landed in a pond in Maine. Our floatation system worked well – it kept most of the electronics dry and prevented HAB-2 from sinking.
Fortunately, Jamey, KC1ENX and Curtis, N1CMD had Jamey’s kayak and were able to retrieve HAB-2. The equipment was wet but appears to be in good working condition. We have all of the telemetry data from HAB-2’s flight.
Due to a glitch at launch, the platform flew on its side for the entire flight and the cameras shut off early due to some unusually cold conditions (-70° F) that HAB-2 encountered during its flight. We did get some video from the first 50 minutes of the flight.
You can view the video of HAB-2’s launch, flight, and recovery below.
Our students will be getting together later this week to analyze the data from HAB-2’s flight. We are also planning an Amateur Radio open house for them on Sunday, Nov. 12th at our QTH.
Congratulations to our students and to our HAB Team for another successful flight!
Source: Ham Talk Live! Episode 86 – Getting Started with Satellites with KX9X | QRZ Forums
This is a good podcast on how to get started with satellites. Check it out.
Fred, AB1OC
