As part of our Field Day activities this morning we will be launching a pico balloon with the clubs callsign.
You can use this link to track the balloon while it’s in flight but if you are able to receive the WSPR messages the below information will help with understanding the messages.
The tracker will be utilizing the Traquito design which you can read more at the link. This design will transmit on 20m WSPR and will use an encoding that can easily be decoded. This encoding will send two WSPR messages on a regular basis which will be needed to get the current status of the balloon such as grid locator, altitude, temperature and some additional stats.
An example of the messages would look like the below:
| Callsign | Grid | Power |
| W0TX | DM79 | 13 |
| 1E5HKK | NF89 | 0 |
To decode this you can download this spreadsheet which you can put the above information in (or what you hear from the balloon). For the above example it decodes down to:
| Field | Decoded value |
| Callsign | W0TX |
| Channel | 5 |
| Locator | DM79jt |
| Altitude | 1720m |
| Temp | 15.57 C |
| Battery | 4.61 V |
| Speed | 2 m/s |
| GPS | 1 |
| Sats | 1 |
For the balloon we will be filling it with helium.
Yesterday was a lot of fun and looking forward to seeing you at the second day of Field Day 2024!
One response
Over 60,000 feet and out of colorado.