Wednesday 30 March 2016

Breaking News - VE3KCL - another balloon flight

Several flights have been reported here before. There was another that got as far as the mid-Atlantic a few weeks ago published on the QRP Labs web site. The site does not mention a flight happening right now, but I was monitoring JT9 on 30m a few minutes ago and received some transmissions which look suspiciously like a balloon flight,. Here's what I saw.

  • [1137] -11 VE3KCL FN03NU
  • [1144] -7   4353.0502157
  • [1145] -11 07843.122815
  • [1149] -9   VE3KCL FN03PV
  • [1156] -9   4353.8461145
  • [1157] -12 07831,133829
  • [1201] -12 VE3KCL FN03RV
  • [1208] -10 4353.6379135
  • [1209] -10 07818.756850
  • [1213] -15 VE3KCL FN03UV
There may have been other transmissions between 1137 and 1144 as I was transmitting in two of those 1-minute slots, although based on the pattern I think that unlikely. The above lists the time in UTC, the signal strength in dB and the content of the transmission. The frequency is 10.140468 MHz. The DT (delta time, which is the difference between the balloon's clock and mine) is not shown but has varied between -0.8 and -1.2 so far.

FN03NU is centred over Lakefront Park in Oshawa, while 12 minutes later it was ENE of the former position in the Bowmanville area. The transmission at 1201 show it in FN03RV which is still on the lake shore East of Wilmot Creek over Lovekin (an easy grid square locator with map is on the http://www.qrz.com/gridmapper). So it appears to have been released not that long ago. The last reading shown above is over Lake Ontario directly South of Port Hope. Click the map for a larger view.



I don't know what the telemetry means and was unable to find it on the web site. It appears to have changed from the previous flight. 

That's all for now. I'll see how long I can track it today and report back here.

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