Amateur radio high-altitude ballooning

Amateur radio high-altitude ballooning

Testing radio range is often a large component of these hobbies. Amateur radio is often used with packet radio to communicate with 1200 baud, using a system called Automatic Packet Reporting System back to the ground station. Smaller packages called micro or pico trackers are also built and run under smaller balloons. These smaller trackers have used Morse code, Field Hell, and RTTY to transmit their locations and other data.^[17]

The first recorded amateur radio high-altitude balloon launches took place in Finland by the Ilmari program on May 28, 1967, and in Germany in 1964.^[18]

ARHAB program

Image of the Earth's horizon taken from 26 km (16 mi) on an ARHAB flight.

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.

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 Packet 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 radioteletype (RTTY), Hellschreiber, Morse code and PSK31, to transmit data over great distances using little battery power. The 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 instruments. Some ARHAB flights carry a simplified payload package called BalloonSat.

A typical ARHAB flight uses a standard latex weather balloon, lasts around 2–3 hours, and reaches 25–35 km (16–22 mi) in altitude. 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 5,400 km (3,400 mi) 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 mi (10,036 km) from San Jose, California, to a splashdown in the Mediterranean Sea. The flight lasted 57 hours and 2 minutes. It became the first successful U.S. transcontinental and the first successful transatlantic amateur radio high-altitude balloon.^{[19][20][21][22]} Since that time, a number of flights have circumnavigated the Earth using superpressure plastic film balloons.^[23][24]

Each year in the United States, the Great Plains Super Launch (GPSL) hosts a large gathering of ARHAB groups.

BEAR program

Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio (BEAR) is a series of Canadian-based high-altitude balloon experiments by a group of Amateur Radio operators and experimenters from Sherwood Park and Edmonton, Alberta. The experiments started in the year 2000 and continued with BEAR-9 in 2012, reaching 36.010 km (22.376 mi).^[25][26] The balloons are made of latex filled with either helium or hydrogen. All of the BEAR payloads carry a tracking system comprising a GPS receiver, an APRS encoder, and a radio transmitter module. Other experimental payload modules include an Amateur Radio crossband repeater, and a digital camera, all of which is contained within an insulated foam box suspended below the balloon.   

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