GRP005

GRP005 was a project to assist a Melbourne student “Bryce”  to obtain images from a high altitude balloon for an end of school assignment.
GRP005 was released and recovered on July 11th 2017

Release location Elmore Victoria

Release location Elmore Victoria

Video still from onboard Go Pro

Video still from onboard Go Pro

MTG002 Balloon Released Successfully

MTG002 successfully flew to a Max Altitude of 19,582m, attributed to a fantastic team effort over the past 12 months by everyone that participated during the planning, construction, testing and the release of the balloon. Thank you to Don VK3HDX for assisting with communications between everyone on HF 40meters throughout the day, keeping everyone informed and Lui VK3ZLD our photographer on the day.

We had a perfect day for the release with just about no wind at all, upon release the balloon went straight up vertical. Throughout the day the balloon was tracked by VK3TBC, VK3HDX, VK3YSP, VK3FADI, VK3XCO, the last contact with the balloon was David VK3TBC who had a perfect fix on the payload at about 2 deg on his horizon at 353Klm away until the balloon burst, not bad for 25mw FM.

We are all excited with the performance of the FM mode transmission used on the payload and will continue further experiments with this mode and hardware in the future.

Frequency of payload UHF FM 434.650 25 mw. Modes:  Thor  Telemetry, 1200 FEC Telemetry and SSDV, Olivia  Telemetry, 4800  Telemetry and SSDV, 9600  Telemetry

Last transmission from the payload

The MARTG team setting up the balloon and connecting the parachute

Guy VK3GUY and Peter VK3XCO carefully finalizing the payload

payload

Local resident wondering whats going on under his tree

DSC_6758

Up and away

MTG_balloon

Thank you all those who assisted with the tracking that enabled photos to be upload to SSDV

VK3TBC, VK3HDX, VK3YSP, VK3FADI, VK3XCO

Photos sent back from the onboard serial camera on the payload

Photos from MTG002 onboad serial camer

Balloon burst