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Good evening, everyone. It's time for HamTalk
Live. It's episode number 145, High Altitude
Ballooning, recorded live on Thursday, December
20th, 2018. I'm your host, Neil Rapp, WB9VPG.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of HamTalk
Live. Tonight, we're joined by Joshua W3ARD.
and we'll take your calls live in just a few
minutes. Last week, here on the show, Steve Nardussi,
W9SN, and Fred Dennon, WW4LL were here to talk
about the Be Loud contest station build. if you
missed that show you can listen anytime just
go over to HamTalkLive .com or your favorite
podcast app or YouTube and you can catch us there
on the replays. Well some announcements coming
up well actually already starting the 12 Days
of Christmas special event station but starting
tomorrow I'm going to jump in some the operators
had some technical issues with LED Christmas
lights among other things making racket and so
I'm going to jump in and help out a little bit
on the special event so I'll be on HF tomorrow
after 3 p .m. Eastern for a while and then later
on in the evening. I'll be back on as well and
hope to also get a few satellite contacts this
weekend with the special event for the 12 days
of Christmas. tomorrow I know I'm W2M so I'll
be one of the W2M operators and then we'll see
we'll see what they give me after that but give
me a call we'll spot on DX Summit and if you
want more information about the 12 days of Christmas
special event go to qrz .com and search either
K2RYD or any of the call signs. Mine will be
W2Mike, Whiskey2Mike. And they'll tell you about
the beautiful certificate you can get in all
the 12 days of Christmas stations. And that's
going to culminate on a Christmas birthday special
event on December 25th. You can check out K2B,
K2Bravo on QRZ .com about that, but they're celebrating
people who have birthdays on Christmas Day or
any of the holidays around this time. New Year's,
whatever. So check that out. But the event will
be on December 25th. So check that out. That's
K2 Bravo. And then one other on -air thing going
on. NASA on the air. We've talked about it on
this show a couple of times. And that is ending
here in a week. So that ends on December 27th
with the Apollo 8 50th anniversary celebration.
So be sure to check out NASA radio clubs on Facebook
and Twitter and nasaontheair .wordpress .com
for more information about that, but you've got
a week to get your last points. for NASA on the
air so make sure you check that out. Okay well
we're going to talk high altitude ballooning
tonight so get those questions ready to go. We'll
talk to Josh for a little bit then we'll take
a break and then we'll come back and open up
the phone lines but I'll go ahead and give you
the phone number so you have it written down
and have it all ready to go. It's 812 NET ham
one that's eight one two six three eight four
two six one that's how you can call in to participate
into the show tonight we'll also take tweets
so if you're on twitter you can tweet us it's
just at ham talk live on twitter and we'll be
checking that from time to time and i'll be back
with josh right after this word from tower electronics
right here on ham talk live I'm sorry to bother
you, but I'm having an antenna party and I ran
out of PL259s. Oh, come in. Thank you. Would
silver -plated PL259s from Tower Electronics
be too good for your guests? Those will be fine.
Thank you. You saved my life the other night.
Oh, the PL -259s from Tower Electronics? Yes,
they were very successful at the antenna party.
My antenna works like a charm. Then how can you
ever thank me? I'll try to think of something.
Don't be caught without PL -259s. Visit Tower
Electronics at a ham fest near you or visit them
online anytime at PL -259 .com or call 920 -435
-2973. They have adapters, cables, antennas,
soldering supplies and meters too. If Denny's
is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, why
are there locks on the doors? Now, here's Neil
Rapp with more HamTalk Live. Thanks to Scott
and Gillette Tower Electronics for sponsoring
the show as they always do. And they're on a
little break here of the Hamfest circuit, but
they'll be back starting on January 5th. It's
Waukesha, I think is how Paul told me how to
pronounce that, Wisconsin. And then January 18th
and 19th will be in Fort Myers, Florida. January
19th, St. Charles, Illinois. January 26th, one
of them, I don't know which one's going where,
but one's being Collinsville, Illinois, and the
other one Arcadia, Florida. But you can always
visit them at PL -259 .com even tonight. So if
you need some last -minute gifts, just go over
there to PL -259. dot com and tell them Neil
over at HamTalk Live sent you and they'll give
you the special 0 % off sale. Well, Josh Ward
is with us tonight. W3 ARD. He is in Waco, Texas
and no, he doesn't have any connection to the
branch to Davidians, nor does he know Chip and
Joanna, but Josh enjoys working satellites and
APRS high altitude balloons. And he's our resident
late night operator on the satellites typically
in one of the contributors to the Walmart parking
lots on the air events. And he was on this show
for that. He has his pilot's license and as a
technology consultant for the Baylor University
School of Business. So Josh, welcome back to
HamTalk Live. Welcome. Thank you very much, Neil.
Glad to be back on. I'm not sure about contributor.
I think maybe co -conspirator. Conspirator might
have been... I think that's probably the better
way to put it. Yeah. It may have been more accurate,
I think. Right. But we had a lot of fun with
that. We may have to see... We haven't had one
of those in a while. We may have to bring that
back. Yeah. Well, we're going to have to... Talk
to Chris and some of the other guys on that one.
Um, but yeah, that was fun, right? The very beginning
of may. Well, we're talking about something else
that's fun and that's a blowing up balloons and
launch them in the near space. So, uh, let's
talk about the basics of launching one of these
high altitude balloons and it is a radio show.
So we can't say, well, if you look at this diagram
right here, you know, so if you can, Josh has
got some stuff up on his website. It's starduster
.info and we just tweeted out a link and sent
out a Facebook link to that page. But if you
just go to starduster .info, you can look at
some of the pictures and visuals, if you want
to. He's going to try to explain everything verbally,
but if you want some pictures to go along with
it, just hop on over there while you're listening.
Josh, go ahead and let's talk about the basics
of high -altitude ballooning. Sure thing. Well,
to start with, high -altitude ballooning is actually
the reason I got into amateur radio to begin
with. People have been doing this for you know
years and years and years. I've seen Other attempts
you can go to tons of websites and kind of see
how other people do it I would love to fancy
myself as a kind of person that could you know
redo cars and you know gut a house and redo interiors
of houses, but You know there's always something
about it something there that you know would
kind of stump me or stop me my tracks and I kind
of know my limits but as I started looking at
the concept of sending balloons into near space,
you know, 80, 90, 100 ,000 feet. As I stepped
through it, I realized that pretty much the whole
project was right in my wheelhouse of photography
and being a pilot, stepping through the aviation
side and the winds aloft and path prediction
and all that kind of stuff. So I kind of thought
about doing it for a year or two. And then I
guess it's been about four years. I went ahead
and committed to You know, I'm gonna go ahead
and do this knew that it was not the cheapest
hobby to get into And so I just went actually
went to Kickstarter Mostly as a more legitimate
way to collect funds from friends, you know,
you can talk about it at lunch and somebody will
say oh, yeah I'll give you 40 bucks, but then
to go to actually make the ask it was a whole
lot easier to go to Kickstarter and look for
funding, which is actually the reason that I
have the starduster .info website is I kept up
the project updates in parallel on my website
as I was doing updates to the original Kickstarter
backers four years ago. So if you step over to
that website, you can kind of see the progress
of a build as we go. You know, whenever people
see the pictures, immediately you see the curvature
of the earth and you see the blackness of space
and everybody always says, hey, you know, you
send balloons to space. And the answer is not
exactly. You know, we're above 99 .97 % of the
atmosphere. We're approaching a hard vacuum.
But legally, space doesn't begin until 60 miles.
I know there's astronauts that get wings at 50
miles. You know, we're not even breaching 20
miles. The pictures are compelling they're convincing,
but that's why I go to my out of my way to say
near space You know so Got into the hobby about
four years ago each launch has gotten increment
incrementally more complex and difficult learning
curve I don't launch balloons as often as some
folks. I know some people that do it monthly.
Some people have made a career out of career
out of it I just enjoy taking it piece by piece,
sort of step by step. My first launch I ever
did, I did not fly with APRS, I was not licensed,
and I got away with two GoPro cameras and a little
backpacking GPS tracking device, a little Spot
Gen 3 device. But then very quickly realized
that getting into amateur radio and tracking
with APRS was gonna be... Much much better option
for more real -time tracking Which is actually
the reason that I have the vanity call sign the
whiskey three alpha Romeo Delta. I live in five
land But at the time I didn't think I was ever
really gonna be talking on the radio I just got
the license because I wanted to do a PRS and
then realized I enjoyed the satellite aspects
of the hobby and so now I'm a confusing vanity
three living in five land here in Texas But but
on your Twitter you you kind of clarified that
with stroke. Yeah, right, right? Yeah W3 ARDE
spelled out stroke five. I think somebody else
was sitting on the Twitter handle W3 ARD So I
had to get creative and append it with some extra
information Yeah, what all you do you need to
get one of these? launches going, and then we'll
get into some of the specifics of the ham stuff,
but what are you going to need to make this thing
fly? So the, um, I mean, first and foremost,
if you're going to do high altitude balloons,
you're probably going to have a balloon. Um,
I would make, yeah, I purchased my balloons from
a K -Mont. Um, there are other folks that'll
sell you balloons, but I usually fly K -Mont
and I will fly a 12. 100 or a 1500 gram balloon
When you purchase a 12 or 1500 gram balloon,
that's actually how much the balloon itself weighs
so 1500 gram balloon is over three pounds of
latex. I mean the balloon itself is over three
pounds six foot diameter approximately at launch
and as it climbs and expands They'll climb out
to 28 or 32 feet in diameter and then they'll
fail at a very prescribed diameter, which is
good because you want the balloons to fail. You
need them to fail because you want your stuff
to come back down for recovery. But the balloons
run anywhere from 95 to maybe 110, $120 a piece.
Helium, a 2000 PSI cylinder, 219 cubic feet of
helium. Depends on the time of year depends on
the you're gonna run you anywhere from 130 to
160 apiece. So you're already 250 to 280 dollars
Just into the first launch and that's just with
the the balloon and the helium Depending on what
you want to carry if you want to carry cameras
there are people that work with Raspberry Pi
and small cameras that do everything on board.
The, you know, the fast solution is to, you know,
buy GoPro or some type of other camera that is,
you know, built and kind of proven already. I
will say that the video that you shoot at whether
it's 1080 or 4K is beautiful video, but video
because it's, you know, 10 ,080 lines of resolution
doesn't make for good photos. If you're trying
to make beautiful photos, and I'm always interested
in the photos, I usually will fly a camera with
video and then I dedicate at least one camera
to taking photos, 10 or 12 megapixel photos.
once per second or something to that effect.
So I would advise if you want beautiful photos,
consider that video doesn't actually make great
photos, which is why I fly more than one camera.
And then you absolutely can buy styrofoam containers.
I tend to like a more elegant, I jokingly say
that my hobby is, I work with elegantly engineered
beer coolers. I prefer I prefer not to take a
cooler from scratch from the store because I
like to get inside the cooler and build out Space
for the camera and the batteries and stuff. I
typically will go to a craft store and buy a
flat sheet of styrofoam Take a hot knife like
a wire cutter and actually cut them to spec cut
them to shape and then build up the four walls
and the base. I like a little bit more elegant
solution. But you're constantly watching weight.
You're constantly watching not necessarily down
to the gram, although I do measure with a gram
scale. There is a direct correlation to how much
helium goes into the balloon. We use the term
free lift. So if the balloon can lift itself
and the balloon can lift your payload exactly
neutral and the balloon's not going anywhere,
any amount of helium you add beyond that is what
we would call free lift. And there's kind of
a prescribed way of doing it where I know with
my payloads, if I fly with 850 grams of free
lift, I can realize about 750 feet per minute
of ascent. So whenever you're trying to do prediction
on where the balloon's going to go, a lot of
your prediction is going to be based on having
a knowledge of how quickly the balloon's going
to ascend so that you can plug it into a wind
model. Some people think, hey, I'll add more
helium and we'll go higher. And the answer is
actually not. If you add more helium to the balloon,
the helium will expand quicker and exhaust the
envelope of the balloon. So more helium. might
get you ascending quicker, but your balloon will
fail and burst sooner. So, you know, if you have
an objective of I want to make 90 ,000 feet or
I want to make 100 ,000 feet, there's a lot of
math that you kind of have to work behind the
scenes to get all of that right. But, you know,
in the grand scheme of things, helium balloon,
some long cables, I guess, we use twine. beer
cooler, a couple of cameras, and then some method
with which to track it and then recover your
payloads. Some people use backpacking trackers
like the Spot Gen 3. APRS is great while you're
actually aloft, but if APRS lands out in the
middle of a field and you're not getting digiped
or you're not getting eye gated, that can be
kind of rough. So some folks will do like a fox
hunt, they'll have some type of transmitter on
a frequency that they're using Yagi's to find
out the final location. Or if you have like a
Kenwood or any of the handheld radios or car
based radios that have APRS built in, if you're
in close proximity, you might can even sniff
out your own APRS packet, which is luckily kind
of how I've been able to do it. I use APRS in
the air and I take advantage of the distributed
APRS receivers that all of you fine ham folks
have And then for the final final fix. I usually
rely on the GPS tracker the the satellite based
tracking for like a backpacking tracker for the
final final fix Okay, very good and lots of software
there too, I'm sure and Let's talk a little bit
because we're running out of time here Let's
run through a little bit about crossband repeating
and and getting that APRS signal going Sure,
so on the crossband repeat side I probably most
most folks know what crossband repeat is but
on a terrestrial based repeater You can live
entirely on two meter or entirely on 70 centimeter
But with a balloon, you don't have the power
and you don't have the weight to be able to operate
on the same band. So we work with a crossband
repeater, which is almost identical to what you
would have on the amateur satellites, on the
FM side at least. And so, you know, people do
solutions that are as simple, it's a little bit
more complicated, but they're as simple as like
two handheld, like, Bofanger radios. where essentially
you take the headphone jack from one radio on
a receive frequency and basically get it wired
into the microphone jack of the other radio on
the other band. So you might have one tuned to
a two meter frequency and one tuned to a 70 centimeter
frequency. And as you talk on the two meter,
it basically activates the downlink on the other
bow fang. uh... there are a lot of the way we
have we have to pause because you said the word
balfang we had to play the the balance on so
understand okay go ahead oh no problem uh...
i'm i'm tracking a video yeah the other i don't
know if you have a song for this one but you
know the other option is uh... there are handhelds
that actually have uh... crossband repeat built
-in t y t eight thousand e i believe is one uh...
So you could fly an all -in -one. And then there's
other solutions. Like I said, people fly Raspberry
Pi with special software that actually will function
as a crossband repeater. Odds are you probably
really, really want to do something that you
can inject repeater ID tones into. If you're
going to fly a repeater, probably kind of need
to live by the rules of a repeater IDing itself
since you're not in local control of it. I do
tend to ID the repeater through voice, but if
you lost control of the repeater, you know, having
ID tones to be legal is kind of the way to go.
So on the APRS side, one of the things that's
kind of interesting, but people don't know, GPS,
most GPS that you buy will stop reporting above
60 ,000 feet. The government is not too keen
on GPS that reports above 60 ,000 feet and faster
than 999 knots. Having one that does both I think
is considered a munition. So you can find GPS,
but a lot of them won't report above 60 ,000.
So if you're gonna fly a balloon, you need to
make sure that your GPS receiver... will report
above 60 ,000 feet or you're gonna be kind of
in the dark for that hour, hour and a half that
it's above that level. But APRS, you definitely
want a transmit only. If you have a transmitter
receiver for APRS, your APRS is gonna get every
single packet for like a 700 mile radius and
it's never gonna be able to get a word in and
send its information back down. So you want one
that's really doing transmit only. and you want
your path basically to do absolutely no repeat
whatsoever, or you're not asking DigiPeters to
repeat your packet, because with a 700 mile footprint,
whenever you have hundreds of APRS receivers,
if they all are repeating your packet, you basically
have choked out the network about once per minute,
and that's very rude of you. You need to pay
attention to APRS path, transmit only, no repeat,
and having a radio in the car that'll do that
packet translation is very, very handy because
if a balloon is tracking across the country like
in Texas, you may be in areas where there's not
good cell connectivity and... If you don't have
good cell connectivity, you can't necessarily
get to APRS .FI to even find out where the balloon
is. So having something mobile in the car where
you are able to receive your own packets is highly
suggested. Very good. We've got some messaging
going on here, so I had to attend to that for
a minute, but that's some general things. There's
a lot of detail that we could get into, and maybe
we will here in a few weeks actually. There's
a lot of detail, but that gives us a general
kind of overview of what's going on which was
our goal for tonight, so That sounds sounds good,
and we're gonna Take a break here, and then we're
gonna come back. We're gonna talk about The tracking
here a little bit more and we're gonna take your
questions and your phone calls here on the show.
So we'll get a chance to do that and I'll be
back with Josh right after this word from Icom
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Join the conversation. Give us a call at 812
-NET -HAM -1. That's 812 -638 -4261. Now, here's
more HamTalk Live. All I want for Christmas is
to listen to another episode of HamTalk Live.
Thanks to iCom America for sponsoring the show
and all kinds of great iCom deals through the
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of those. And HamTalk Live is on the air every
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here at HamTalkLive .com. And be sure to check
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it's time for your calls. So if you have a question
for Josh, give us a call. It's 812 -NET -HAM
-1. That's 812 -638 -4261. Or you can tweet us.
It's at HamTalk Live on Twitter. So I know we've
got a friend of the show here, Bill Brown, that's
done a lot of this stuff and we've been talking
to him today and we're planning on having him
on the show here. And maybe a month or so we'll
get that all put together and he can get into
some of the details here. But one of the things
on APRS tracking is, you know, how do you watch
that and track those satellite or pseudo satellites?
How do you get the tracking so that you can chase
this thing down? Right, so if I'm at the house
and want to see what's going on, I use aprs .fi.
I mean, you can just go to the website aprs .fi.
That's it, right? APRS .FI. And then search against
whatever license you have to be flying. I usually
fly W3 ARD. And then it's appended with dash
11 for the balloon. So I will search against
that. And however long it takes the system to
gate my packet, so within 30 seconds or so, I'm
getting position data. I have my transmitter
once per minute. You absolutely could go less
than that. I mean, you could, you know, do every
five or 10 minutes. You know, if you're trying
to go real, real super low power, you know, like
Bill would be doing, you know, that may be 15
minutes to once an hour if you're really trying
to conserve power. I'm not endorsing Apple products.
I use an iPhone. Their APRS .FI app is a great
app. that allows me to track in real time. The
thing I also like about that particular app on
my phone is it does a very good job of graphing
sort of what little telemetry you've got. So
you can see the ascent of the balloon as it's
climbing and you can see how rapidly it is descending.
So, you know, you've got a kind of a sense of
what's going on And so since I've said that kind
of a segue into another point that I find a little
bit interesting When in this blew my mind the
first time I saw it on the graph and I've included
that graph on the starduster .info website if
you go there The balloon actually climbs at a
near linear rate I always thought maybe that
it accelerated on the way up, or it decelerated
on the way up. If the balloon is filled right,
it climbs at almost the same rate, no matter
what the wind, however the wind is pushing it,
it is climbing at the same rate. So 750 feet
a minute, or 500 feet per minute. So that rate
looks very linear on the graph. Of course, when
the balloon bursts, there is no air, or there's
so scarce amount of air, that the balloon begins
to accelerate gravity at 9 .8 meters per second
squared. The balloon descends very rapidly because
there's nothing to slow it down until it gets
into denser and denser and denser air. So when
the balloon bursts, it can accelerate up to 180
to maybe 230 miles per hour. it's coming downhill
until it can get into denser and denser air and
the parachute or the drogue shoot becomes more
and more effective One of the other things that
you have to consider with the balloon is you
know everybody knows the higher you go the the
colder it gets And that holds true for a while
Until you get to 60 70 thousand feet and then
you actually kind of have the opposite problem
Anything that produces heat like cameras and
radios As you climb into that scarcer and scarcer
air, there is no air with which to give heat
to. You actually have radiation issues, as in
you can't radiate heat from your payload. So
if you're talking about a transmitter that's
putting out a lot of information, you know, modems
or whatever, you actually have heat sink issues
where you've got to put that heat somewhere because
there literally is no air with which to give
the heat to. So it becomes a very funny equation
of keeping things warm on the ascent and then
trying to keep them cool once you get above a
certain altitude and they're doing their job
full time. Um, yeah, just interesting things
to think about that you learn as you go. Sure.
So we don't, we, you know, we don't often get
up to, you know, 60 ,000 feet. So we don't know
that kind of thing. So that's good stuff to know.
812 -638 -4261 is the phone number. Go ahead,
Josh. I was going to say, so on average, somewhere
between 75 minutes to up to two hours ascent
until the balloon bursts. And then depending
on what type of chute that you have, anywhere
from maybe 20, 25 minute free fall descent, maybe
as slow as 40 or so minutes. The question I get
all the time is where do you launch from? And
the answer is I don't actually know where I'm
gonna launch from until maybe 24 to 48 hours
beforehand because my launch location is dictated
by what the wind model says I'm gonna land and
I'm gonna go out of my way to avoid cities and
large lakes. I do take airspace considerations
into that equation. So I don't always know where
I'm going to launch until I know what the winds
are going to do. So I kind of build a recovery
area, you know, five, 10 miles circle and say,
OK, if I launch here, where do I need to go to
make my balloon sort of land in this general
vicinity? And because you don't really have a
lot of control. I mean, once you put the helium
in the balloon and you let it go, it's kind of
up to the winds and the gods and the did I did
I do all the math right? And that becomes fun.
It can also be very nerve wracking because like
I said, you're not in control once you let it
go. So it's a lot like storm chasing as you're
driving through back roads trying to stay underneath
this thing. 812 -638 -4261 is the phone number.
If you have a question for Josh, give us a call
and we'll also be checking Twitter here as well.
And I slipped up. I was trying to do two things
at once here and I said satellite and then suddenly
you know I was like oh wait it's pseudo satellite
so so talk a little bit about that word pseudo
satellite and and how that's a little bit different
from typical satellite communication well so
I'm also involved in the amateur satellite amateur
radio community. SO50, the AO series that are
out right now, the FM satellites, they work in
a lot of the same way with the crossband repeater.
Of course, they're 300, 400 miles up, so their
footprint is many thousands of miles. But to
stay in orbit, they would have to be moving at
five miles per second. So depending on sort of
how they're approaching overhead, you may have
four minutes of talk time, or maybe up to 12
minutes. But at five miles per second, you do,
especially on the UHF side, have to take into
account the Doppler shift. So with an actual
satellite, you are having to adjust for, and
as the satellite's coming overhead, that Doppler
shift. with a balloon, you know, it's mostly
static. I mean, it may be moving at 65 up to
100 miles an hour in the jet stream. But, you
know, you could use the same aero antenna, you
could use the same, you know, crossed Yagi type
antenna, but you would be communicating, you
know, a crossband repeater. You would just want
to specify ahead of time, you know This is the
uplink frequency that you transmit on and you
listen to the you know, the downlink on the other
band Sort of the same thing I would assume with
the APRS crossband repeater at 70 80 90 thousand
feet is going to be able to hear it's gonna be
able to receive I mean pretty much any transmission
in the state of Texas you would best be served
by adding a PL, at least a PL receive tone on
a crossband repeater that you hang at that altitude
because you don't really want your receiver open,
you don't want your receiver transmitting just
blindly because, again, from 100 ,000 feet, you
may have a 700 -mile footprint. the odds of somebody
transmitting on that up leak frequency increases
with that big of a footprint so You definitely
would want some type of PL tone probably a PL
tone Way out of range what you would normally
have in your state in your area Just to keep
people from accidentally stomping on what you're
trying to do at altitude I usually use 67 Hertz
just because where I'm at in Texas. It's primarily
123 on the PL tones Well 812 -638 -4261 is the
phone number and if you want to call in with
something give us a call right now. It's 812
-638 -4261. We'll keep it on here with Josh for
a few more minutes this evening and talk a little
bit about high -altitude ballooning. So give
us a call 812 -638. four two six one so let's
see here okay here we go we have our call good
evening hello hey this is bill brown hey bill
how are we doing doing good all right we've got
bill brown here on the line and where did my
notes go for your call WB8ELK and He's done done
this for for forever. I think so You you mentioned
that there's an event that you wanted to promote
a little bit Yes, yeah, I've been flying pile
two balloons for 31 years now and this summer
there is called the Great Plains Superlaunch,
the website is superlaunch .org and it draws
balloon groups from all over the nation and off
in the world and they all meet and we have a
conference on a Friday. This year is going to
be in Pella, Iowa and it basically moves around
the greater part of the Midwest and we get some
of the balloon groups from all over the country.
We have a conference and we talk about the latest
advances in Iowa tube ballooning and then we
launch 10, at least 10, weather balloons and
a few Pico balloons at a big event the following
Saturday in the morning and we go out and we
chase them all over the Iowa countryside. So
they land in corn fields and soybean fields and
we have a ball. chasing down 10 balloons at once.
The conference is open to anyone and we would
love to have anybody come and join us in the
great fun. It's actually very interesting to
watch that event on APRS if you can't attend.
If you watch on APRS it's fun watching the balloons
all kind of moving sort of somewhat in sync until
they're not. It looks like a giant bowl of spaghetti.
It's a lot of fun to watch those paths. Yeah,
it's a I've been going to it for about I think
it's 15 to 18 years now that it's been going
on well 15 I think Well since bills on the line
I'll ask a question Have you ever worked you
work exclusively with helium or have you ever
dabbled in hydrogen just as a better lifting
body? actually due to the I cost the ever -increasing
cost of helium I have been using hydrogen for
a lot of my flights, both the large latex balloons
and the Pico balloons. As long as you take precautions
to cut down on the chance of static buildup,
it's very safe. Actually, the worst that can
happen, unless you get a bunch of air in it,
is it just produce a fireball, a brief fireball.
But the Pico balloons go... At least two or three
thousand feet higher and you get higher Altitudes
out of the regular late picks weather balloons
as well I typically do use helium however for
school events Because basically their insurance
policies that they start getting a little Concern
when you talk about hydrogen they think in the
bird You won't have a Hindenburg on your hand,
even if it was happened. But it's been very safe.
In fact, the last Great Plains Super Launch we
did, the last two of them in fact, most everybody
flew with hydrogen with no issues. Fantastic.
And the cost of hydrogen for about a 219 cubic
foot tank is right around 50 some dollars. So
it's a lot. It's about a third of the cost of
the helium, the last helium launch that I had.
That's about right. Yep. Well, while we've got
both of you on the line, we've got a couple of
questions that have come in on text here. One
on QRZ today was asking about HF telemetry and
an HF signal. What's what's up with with maybe
some CW and 20 meters I have some own Yeah, I've
flown basic Morse code flown Domino EX which
is a nice multi -tone multi -frequency weak signal
mode and Jt9 for example, these are all modes
that you can have a very low -power transmitter
and still get reception on, and this classic
teletype, really. Now, lately, however, I've
come up with a scheme to create telemetry using
whisper mode. Whisper is a very weak signal mode,
and the nice thing about it is there's a distributed
network of ground stations all over the world
tuned to this segment of the 20 meter band or
the 30 meter band and it's for propagation and
most everybody transmits with five watts or less.
In my case I wanted a 12 gram payload that's
totally solar powered and it produces a whopping
25 milliwatts and I use a magnet wire dipole
that weighs three grams. So the total payload
is 15 grams, just a fraction of an ounce. And
I could put it on a Mylar party balloon. And
in fact, there's another balloon called the SBS
-13 by Scientific Balloon Solutions. They have
one about the size of a trash bag. And those
can go and float in the jet stream or above the
jet stream in the case of the larger balloon.
and have the potential to go completely around
the world and they're jet stream floaters and
the really neat thing is they take minimal amounts
of helium or hydrogen and the balloon for a party
balloon it's a 36 inch mylar party balloon those
balloons cost three dollars a piece and you've
got about a cubic foot of gas lifting gas the
trash bag sized balloon cost about $129, but
I had one of those go around the world. 75 days
that stayed aloft and it went around the world
six times. So we're using HF. I sent two transmissions
on whisper one with my call sign and one with
telemetry embedded in it. That all goes to this
received. It goes to a database on whisper net
.org. And then I use a Python script to grab
that data, reformat it, decode by telemetry,
and send it to APRS .FI so it shows up like an
APRS object. And that way, if you ever see an
APRS balloon over the middle of the Pacific or
the Atlantic Ocean, you wonder, how did anybody
receive that? That's how it happens. Right, very
good. Well we look forward to having you on the
show here in a few weeks and talk about those
Pico balloons and some of the more detailed aspects
of this bill and thanks for writing in this morning
and some of the information you've been typing
to us tonight and we appreciate it and look forward
to having you on the show here soon. Absolutely
and happy to answer any questions that anybody
might have about high -altitude ballooning or
the Pico balloons okay to give my email address
out sure I can that's WBHELK Whiskey Bravo 8
echo Lima kilo at gmail .com and I'm happy to
answer anybody's questions okay well thanks a
lot Bill we appreciate your time tonight and
thanks for calling in all right thanks very much
all right take care now All right. Well, we're
about out of time here, Josh, but I do have one
other tweet that I see here from K5IX from Dave
and says, Hey Josh, still cherish my cool night
out QSL. Just interested to know what sort of
crew you use for launch and recovery, or is it
all manageable by yourself and hope to bump into
you again sometime. Well, it's great hearing
from Dave Fellow Texan and there is sort of a
story about bumping into each other I was down
in Austin a couple of months ago just doing my
thing and I got a text message from him apparently
he'd walked by and saw my Vanity license plate
the odds I mean the odds of us both being in
the same place in Austin at the same time and
him recognizing my license plate or slim to none
But to answer the question Yeah For the type
of balloons that we're talking about, the helium
balloons, definitely having two or three hands
to help with the filling process, tying off the
balloons, attaching the payload. Definitely best
served by having two or three folks on hand.
I've done it with Baylor engineering students.
my wife now, girlfriend, fiance at the time,
having her on board. I've had family members,
but as far as the launch crew, two to four people
on hand is probably the best way to go. Once
you let the balloon go, you're gonna wanna chase
pretty quickly. So having somebody that's willing
to sort of stay back and load up bottles and
load up all the gear is really, really handy.
Chasing, you could probably chase with one or
two folks. It's nice to go out with a group of
folks. I mean, we've had as many as 10 or 12
cars on the chase, landing in certain areas,
if you've got to do any kind of fox hunt, if
you've got to do any kind of direction finding,
being able to have two or three crews that can
spread out and try to get a triangulate, try
to get a fix on a balloon. It's fun to share
with folks. So I'd recommend two to four people
for launch, the more the merrier. And then once
the balloons aloft, Again, it's a lot like a
high altitude. It's a lot like a satellite. It's
a shared resource, but you just let as many people
know as possible and let them make QSOs on the
balloon and usually pretty short QSOs just because
it's a shared resource, much like a satellite.
But the more the merrier. It's fun sharing the
hobby and fun sharing the photos and the videos
and doing these kind of events like this with
you. Well, I've sure enjoyed a lot of your pictures
and videos that you shared with me and some pretty
cool stuff. So thanks so much for coming on the
show and telling us about it. And like I said,
we're going to follow up on it and do another
one here soon and get into some more specifics.
But this gives us a great overview of what's
going on with high -altitude ballooning. So thank
you so much. Thank you. Thanks Bill for chiming
in. I'll say the same thing Bill did. My email
address and QRZ is active and I'm usually happy
to answer pretty much any question that comes
my way. So email me, email Bill. We work separately,
never met until today, but most of us that are
in the hobby would love to share and talk about
it. Neil, appreciate your time, thank you. Early
Merry Christmas, happy holidays to you and all
your listeners, and appreciate it. W3 ARD. Okay.
Yep. You can catch him at W3 ARD. Just get in
there on QRZ and you can email Josh if you have
some questions. So we're going to finish things
up here tonight, but thanks to Josh W3 ARD for
coming on the show. And that is a wrap. for this
week's edition of HamTalk Live. And thanks to
everybody out there in cyberspace for listening
and for calling in and typing in. And I invite
you back next Thursday night at 9 p .m. Eastern
Time when Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA, will be here
to talk about making the most of satellite time.
And for a list of all of our upcoming guests,
you can visit HamTalk Live. And if you like HamTalk
Live, please consider leaving us a review on
iTunes or wherever you listen. That helps others
find us faster. So for now, this is Neil Rapp,
WB9VPG, saying 7 -3, 7 -5, may the good DX be
yours, and a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
to all. Thanks for watching.