On Thursday, June 29thth, Harbor Creek High School’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) will be launching a weather balloon with a payload full of amateur radio equipment. Here are the details:
How You Can Participate:
On-Site: Members of Wattsburg Wireless Association are invited to come to Harbor Creek High School on Thursday, June 29th at approximately 14 UTC. We will be outside of the HS office preparing for launch. Launch will take place at approximately 14:05 UTC. After the launch, you will be welcome to come into our radio room and watch as we receive the live video from the payload.
YouTube: We will be producing a livestream of the entire event, including the pre-launch preparations, launch, and post-launch payload video. We have made some significant improvements in this area and are hopeful that the stream will be an enjoyable experience. You can view the livestream on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AdvancedTechnologiesGroup
The livestream will be active from approximately 9am to noon, possibly later depending on how long it takes to retrieve the payload.
There will be a live chat that will be monitored by the students. Please feel free to provide some encouragement and positive feedback.
Amateur Radio: The 1 Watt video from the payload will transmitted on 439.250MHz using DVB-T with 6MHz bandwidth. Together, an RTL-SDR dongle and VLC Media player (computer program) are capable of viewing the stream. More details about that can be found in these directions. In order to receive the signal directly, you will likely need to be located somewhere near where the balloon will be – most likely within about 100 miles of Erie.
Morse Code Beacon: We will have a 15mW beacon transmitting constantly on 144.280MHz.
The balloon has an APRS payload. Track on https://aprs.fi/KC3SGV-11
The ATG is incredibly grateful to the ongoing support shown by members of the WWA. We hope to see a few familiar faces on the day of the launch.
If you have any questions, please direct them to: advancedtechgroup@harbor-creek.com
Drew Mortensen – AC3DS
KD8COJ