Kuss Middle School High Altitude Balloon Launch Is A “Go”

High altitude balloon launchRoland Daignault, N1JOY writes on BCRA list:

Tomorrow (Friday, June 1, 2007) is looking great for the high altitude balloon launch by Kuss Middle School. Here are the last minute details as of just a few minutes ago:

Balloon launch is planned to happen from the Silvia School at the North End of Fall River in the 9:00 to 10:00 AM time frame, depending on how well things go. The balloon will have a 900 MHz transmitter (sorry, I wasn’t told the frequency and/or mode), and will also have 2 Meter APRS on board. (144.39 MHz). The balloon call sign for APRS will be KB9ZNZ-11. If you do not have APRS, you should still be able to track the launch via the Internet at:
http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?kb9znz-11.

The students have prepared several other non-radio payloads that will be carried aloft on this balloon. The balloon will not be allowed to reach its full potential altitude simply because it will land too far off the coast to make recovery practical, so there is a remote control release that is planned to be deployed at a predetermined altitude, which will better control where it will land, and greatly increase the likelihood of a successful recovery.

Several other stations will be online for the APRS tracking of this launch:

KB1LJG-1 – Kuss Middle School Ham Club Station
KB1LJG-8 – manned by the launch team at Silvia School
KB1LJG-15 – this will be the recovery team

KB9ZNZ-11 – Balloon

The balloon as of today is predicted to land somewhere in the middle of Buzzards Bay. As the launch window gets closer, the prediction software can give a more accurate estimate, but that’s about as good as it gets for tonight’s message.

Most of the communications will be handled by Kuss students, and their primary frequency will be the Fall River 145.150 repeater, and possibly migrating the the Falmouth 146.655 repeater to communicate with the recovery boat as needed. I hear the USCG may be assisting in the recover effort also!

Good Luck to the Kuss Middle School Ham Radio Club!

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