8. February 2012 by admin.

I got wind of this in a ZDNet “tweet” via Twitter …

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/student-sends-mit-letter-to-space/15114




This is the short version, there is a longer version video as well on HER Youtube site …
MIT’16 EA Tube goes to Near Space! - short version

King used two GPS ham radio transmitters (APRS), a helium-filled weather balloon, and a GoPro Hero camera as part of her ‘Amateur Radio High-Altitude Ballooning project’, as well as making custom antennas for the radios. The camera mounted to the tube — ‘TubeCam’ — managed to take 960p HD footage to track the journey.

The tube was loaded and launched in Georgia on January 16. The flight lasted approximately 2 hours and managed to attain an altitude of 91,000 feet. The tube landed more than 75 miles away near Cordele, in a small patch of trees surrounded by a cotton field.

* See also: http://www.arhab.org/

Amateur Radio High Altitude Ballooning is the premier site for near space explorers and enthusiasts dedicated to the education and study of aerospace science via Amateur Radio High Altitude Ballooning.

 More information is available on the WikiPedia site;

There are no membership requirements short of an interest in becoming an aeronaut and a willingness to share your experiences with us.
The Edge of Space

Very few people have images from the edge of space in their personal photo albums–snapshots in which a hazy blue atmosphere hugs the curve of our planet against a backdrop of the black abyss beyond. But of those who do, many are amateurs, average people, taking regular trips deep into the stratosphere and peering out from the edge of Earth. Their hobby, high altitude ballooning has been called the “poor man’s space program,” because they are probing an environment more similar to that found on Mars than to any down here on Earth.
What is nearspace?

Near space is that region of the atmosphere above 60,000 feet but below the accepted altitude of space, 328,000 feet. These altitudes make near space far more like earth orbit than the surface of the earth. Air pressure in near space reaches 99% of a vacuum or better. Air temperatures drop to a low of -60 degrees F or colder. Cosmic radiation is over 100 times greater than at sea level. Near space is located within the ozone layer and therefore is an environment of increased damaging ultraviolet radiation. Near space is reached by helium or hydrogen-filled weather balloons. Since it is far less expensive to send payloads into near space than earth orbit, organizations like NASA will send new designs into near space first, as a test.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARHAB

Amateur Radio High Altitude Ballooning (Wikipedia) 

Amateur Radio High Altitude Ballooning (ARHAB) is the application of analog and digital amateur radio to weather balloons and was the name suggested by Ralph Wallio (amateur radio callsign W0RPK) for this hobby. Often referred to as “The Poorman’s Space Program”, ARHAB allows amateurs to design functioning models of spacecraft and launch them into a space-like environment. Bill Brown (amateur radio callsign WB8ELK) is considered to have begun the modern ARHAB movement with his first launch of a balloon carrying an amateur radio transmitter on 15 August 1987. The first recorded ARHAB launch, however, is recorded to have taken place in Finland by the Ilmari program on May 28, 1967.
 
An ARHAB flight consists of a balloon, a recovery parachute, and a payload of one or more packages. The payload normally contains an amateur radio transmitter that permits tracking of the flight to its landing for recovery. Most flights use an Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS) tracker which gets its position from a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver and converts it to a digital radio transmission. Other flights may use an analog beacon and are tracked using radio direction finding techniques. Long duration flights frequently must use high frequency custom built transmitters and slow data protocols such as RTTY, Hellschreiber, Morse code and PSK31, to transmit data over great distances using little battery power. Use of amateur radio transmitters on an ARHAB flight requires an amateur radio license, but non-amateur radio transmitters are possible to use without a license.
 
In addition to the tracking equipment, other payload components may include sensors, data loggers, cameras, amateur television (ATV) transmitters or other scientific experiments. Some ARHAB flights carry simplified payload packages called BalloonSats.
 
A typical ARHAB flight uses a standard latex weather balloon, lasts around 2-3 hours, and reaches 25 to 35 km in altitude. Although experiments with zero-pressure balloons, superpressure balloons, and valved latex balloons have extended flight times to more than 24 hours. A zero-pressure flight by the Spirit of Knoxville Balloon Program in March 2008 lasted over 40 hours and landed off the coast of Ireland, over 5400 km from its launch point. On December 11, 2011 the California Near Space Project flight number CNSP-11 with the call sign K6RPT-11 launched a record breaking flight traveling 6,236 miles from San Jose, California to a splashdown in the Mediterranean Sea. The flight lasted 57 hours and 2 minutes. It became the first successful US transcontinental and first successful transatlantic amateur radio high altitude balloon.[1][2][3][4]
 
Each year in the United States the Great Plains Super Launch (GPSL) hosts a large gathering of ARHAB groups.

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73 de KA4UDX,
Alan Spicer

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8. February 2012 by admin.

This morning I checked into a Caribbean Weather and Traffic Net on 3815 Khz (3.815 Mhz) S.S.B. with KP2Z after having listened to him run through taking check ins from the Island Chain of the Caribbean … they’ve been having some rain in many of the islands of the Caribbean. KP2Z is located in Arroyo, PR 00714.

KP2Z Puerto Rico - QRZ.COM Image

Last night before going to bed … I got one of two remaining states that I needed for “Worked All States” on eQSL.cc -  the web site and system that I used for Electronic QSL and Amateur Radio Contact Logging. Thanks to N0JE for making that possible:

http://www.qrz.com/db/n0je

N0JE-ND-QRZ.COM-Image

N0JE-ND-40M-For-eWAS

N0JE USA - North Dakota - Wider Google Earth, USA view

* Now I only have one state left to make two way radio contact with on Ham Radio to have “eWAS” Worked All States mixed modes/bands on eQSL.cc. Anyway not worth too many cups of coffee from anyone … but very good for my geography knowledge and good practice of “non infrastructure” free air radio communications for potential emergency use and a heck of a good way to meet new people and share camraderie across the USA and the World.

* Last night I also had a few long QSO “rag chew” conversations with two stations on 40 Meters S.S.B. very good signals and propagation on 40 M for these “sessions” where I had KB1LSK in BAILEYVILLE, ME 04694 and (even longer with) AA9GC Herb in JACKSON, MO 63755 - Herb was the longest one of them later last night, but I also chatted with WW1I, Bryan in Grantham, NH; K1EKF in Evans, GA; K2GAV in Barkhamsted, CT and I even managed to pull in a repeat contact with IK2DDK in BELLAGIO COMO Italy.

IK2DDK - QRZ.com Image

* “So what …?” some persons will probably say … until they realize that these were NOT cell phone calls, they were not Text Messaging on cellular, and  they were not Internet-based voice or web chats. There were “no wires”, “no Internet”, no “telephone” in these FRIEND sessions - our signals, our voices, traveled from our own private antennas up through the ionosphere between our stations with no public or commercial infrastructure inbetween. How cool is that????

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73 de KA4UDX,

Alan Spicer

a.k.a. Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

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