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Did a little more research on the balloon project today. There will be some engineering involved here I think. The following website has some good information on what is involved. They may also be a source for low temperature capable electronics for the payload as well as for the necessary high altitude balloon and related equipment. Check out the website here.
Hi Greg,
It is difficult to use the same antenna for both you main radio and an SDR receiver. The problem come when your your rig transmits. Without protection of some sort, the SDR receiver will likely be damaged. If you have a radio with an IF output or outboard loops for receive preamps or a transverter, you may be able to connect an SDR to one of these ports and use your transmitter’s T/R switching to protect the SDR during Tx. The other thing that you could do would be to implement and outboard T/R switching system and use a sequencer to control it. Note that you’d need to set proper sequencing delays to ensure that an outboard relay was closed and any vulnerable equipment was shutdown before connecting the SDR to the antenna. If you have multiple rigs, you’d have to protect the SDR from any of them transmitting on bands which could damage the SDR.
This probably sounds pretty complicated but its actually not as bad as it sounds. We do it here to protect active receive antennas which we use on the low bands. If you want to hear more about what is involved, give me a call.
73,
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Thanks Brian, Jamey and Aron – seems like we have a core team to do this project. Here’s a diagram that shows how the balloon system is put together –
[attachment file=7016]
1) Weather balloon
2) Parachute
3) Duct-taped foam capsule
4) Buzzer
5) Hand warmer packet
6) GPS antenna
7) Lithium AA battery pack
8) Canon point-and-shoot camera, hacked with CDHK firmware upgrade
9) Arduino Uno microcontroller with Trackuino radio transmitter shield
10) External temperature sensor
11) Coat-hanger radio antennaI think that it might be a good idea to split this project up into several parts and have each of us take on one or more of them. We also need to include things like steps to get young people to help us and budget/fund raising. I don’t have an estimate yet of what this will cost but I am guessing that it may be such that we’ll want to get some folks to make a donation to support it. In any case, here’s a starting point for the sub-projects:
- Design and Build APRS/Camera Electronics and Tracking System
- Balloon Design, Materials/Gas and Flight Path Modeling
- Capsule Design and Recovery System (includes pre-test planning)
- Launch Site Selection, Safety Plan and FAA Notification
- Budget and Financing Leader, Overall Project Plan, Schedule and Management
- Youth liaison/PR (person to create interest and help us to get young people involved in the other parts of the project)
I would like to sign up for #1. Maybe we could get Anita or Wayne W. to sign up for #5? What do you all think of this approach?
FB Jamey and Brian. We’ll count both of you in. Looks like there will be several aspects to this project – putting the Balloon together, building the controller/APRS, the camera, getting kids in the local schools to help us, etc. Lets see if we can get some other folks in the club interested as well. If you are interested, please post a response to this thread.
73,.
FB Hamilton. We’ll try to add some more about using DXLab for QSL’ing at our upcoming Tech Night on loggers. Hope to see you there.
73,
Hello Hamilton,
QSL’ing is sort of its own Amatuer Radio sub-topic and there are definitely things that work well and some that don’t. DXLab is a good tool for QSL-ing. Anita and I use it to QSL over 10 callsigns including AB1OC, AB1QB, N1FD, K2K, FO/AB1OC, FO/AB1QB and the mobile and portable variations of these callsigns. I think that you are on the right track with the idea of using a program like DXLab to print your cards. The way we do this is we get photo cards made with blank backs and we use DXLab to print the QSL information. I did an article on this topic awhile back. You can check it out here.
How you choose to QSL and the approach you take to direct QSL requests will determine how successful you are at securing confirmations. Here are the QSL stats for my callsign, AB1OC:
- Total QSOs to date – 52,000+
- Total Direct QSLs sent – 13,000+
- %QSOs Confirmed via LoTW – 41%
- %QSOs Confirmed via Direct Cards – 74%
The QSL Bureau route is a slow process but it does work reasonably well for the stations which participate and it is inexpensive compared to the direct SAE (Self address envelope)/green stamp route. Best case, the Bureau route takes a year but this can easily extend to 2 years or more.
You will find that many DX contacts will require you to go the direct SAE/green stamp route to obtain a card. The method outlined in the article here will produce the best results in the face of growing problems with international postal theft. Using ClubLog’s OQRS services is a great alternative for stations which make this service available. ClubLog OQRS speeds up the process significantly and eliminates the problems with postal theft when green stamps are used. We provide ClubLog OQRS for our club’s N1FD callsign.
It is also customary to provide an SASE (Self Addressed Stamped Envelope) when confirming most USA contacts.
We use UX5UO to print our blank-bank photo cards including the club’s QSL cards. He does a great job and a reasonable cost.
I hope that this information helps you.
73,
Congratulations to Abby and Connor on completing their PXIE Kits and getting them working!
And a very special thanks to Brian S. for putting together one of best Tech Nights yet!
73,
Thanks for the suggestion Ed, its a good one. Anita, Brian – I know that our survey is already open but could we add Ed’s suggestion to our list to get some input on interest from our members?
73,
Thanks for clarifying Mike. I understand your concern. Lets give 20m a try and if we can’t do it, lets try 40m as well. If that does not work, we can also try 80m if you have that band. Would you like to get together and run some experiments together. I could do this before the net this evening sometime if that works for you. Let me know what’s best.
73,