HAM RADIO ACROSS THE SKY

EASTERN EXPRESS

Answering the age old question What do you do when you have extra time on your hands?

RADIO. 

What do you do when you have extra, extra time on your hands?

BUILD RADIO BALLOONS

As usual our members have diverse interests outside the shack and in this case way beyond.  You will see displayed here an recent email from our own W3QA sent to Jim AI4WL of the PARSGram.  This PICO Balloon project is fascinating and soon we will have more in depth photos and videos from one of their many launches.  For the meantime though please read along and click on the link to the locator site.  What an accomplishment that further defines the many avenues of pursuit for Hams.

From Lor Kutchins, W3QA, 1931Z/21 Mar 2024:

A stalwart team of Bruce Perkins, Matt McMahon, Chris Cieszko, and Lor

Kutchins tended to launch preparations beginning at 0800 at the EHPC

Regional Operations Center, and at about 0900 moved to the launch site

(ECU Recreation Park) east of Greenville near route 264. Wind was

gusting to 10 knots and cold from the northeast. Temperature was 46F.

Two drones and a handheld camera captured images as Bruce Perkins

released the balloon at about 0915. It tracked southwest, rising slowly,

just clearing the recreation field lights standards by twenty feet. The

team retreated back to the EHPC facility to await the first arrival of

telemetry from the craft.

We waited, and waited, and all the “what could go wrong” possibilities

were in hot discussion in good humor. Then with boredom setting into the

odd mixture of anticipation and excitement, Bruce and Lor took off to

travel home. Nothing appeared on our screens. Until… after lunch at 1718

UTC a batch of spots from 27 different receiving stations arrived. The

news from these stations — from Missouri to Nova Scotia to Florida —

was that our balloon was at 12920m (41990’) altitude and somewhere

within the FM34 grid square. She’s awake and alive!

A few minutes later, more spots helped us determine we were in the

northwest corner of grid FM34ew, some 100+ miles due East of Hatteras,

heading eastward in the jet stream at 100+ MPH. Go girl!

Looking forward to tomorrow’s flight path, we expect to make a beeline

to the Irish West coast, then turn either South or Southwest towards the

north coast of Africa and then turn East again. Let’s see how that goes.

Tune in tomorrow.

Currently, flight monitoring is available in a simple format at http://lu7aa.org/wsprx.asp?banda=20m&other=nc4es&balloonid=&timeslot=&repito=on&wide=&detail=on&SSID=6&launch=20240321144500&tracker=zachtek1#.

Search for NC4ES-6 there. More data with telemetry

spots and mapping can be played with at . Look for ‘NC4ES’ in the small typeface

list of call signs and click it to load the display filter with our

data. In a few moments the screen will populate with information on the

receiving WSPR stations, the actual data received, and a map with lots

of options. This flight is not instrumented beyond basic tracker

sensors, so you won’t find other information like temperatures,

pressures, and other measurements in our data stream.

We will begin posting on Facebook (NC4ES group) if you follow that, and

will advise of other media opportunities soon.

Keep your fingers crossed for a long and interesting flight. We aim to

better our record of NC4ES-4 orbiting the planet 1.25 times!

73,

Lor Kutchins, W3QA

For the Eastern Express Pico Balloon Team

Lofty readers here to follow are some photos supplied to us from Lor and Bruce displaying some of the work involved with the Eastern Express Pico Balloon.  The entire process is fascinating as explained in a recent AV presentation to our PARS Club members.  Keep up with the current progress using the link address above.