Announcement of EOSS-37

note: The original announcement for this flight was lost. This is a recreation compiled on 18-March-2005. the recreation was prompted by the recent submission by Marty Griffin, WA0GEH, of documents pertaining to the flight.


LAUNCH DATE: November 14, 1998
LAUNCH TIME: 14:00 UTC, 08:00 MST
LAUNCH SITE: Gene Fatton's Ranch

LAUNCH SITE COORDINATES:

  • 40deg 28.493' North
  • 104deg 57.756' West Longitude

EXPECTED TRACK:

  • East

FLIGHT EXPERIMENTS:

  • Operational training for Lockheed-Martin Explorer Scouts and Englewood High School Physics Students.

FREQUENCIES:

Preflight Foxhunter Net:

  • 147.225 MHz Colorado Repeater Association (Thanks)
  • 8:00PM the preceding night

Launch Site Frequency:

  • Simplex 146.550 MHz

Telemetry:

  • 144.340 MHz FM (1 Watt output)
  • The Packet telemetry stream is in AX.25 format at 1200 baud and is readable in plain English for the most part. Included in each telemetry frame is an APRS position string (APRS users see note below). Every few minutes a CW ID is transmitted on this frequency.

Beacon:

  • 147.555 MHz
  • Primary beacon for the Tracking and Recovery Teams

ATV: (weight contingent)

  • 426.250 MHz AM (1 Watt output) - NTSC video
  • EOSS Shuttle Video

Tracking and Recovery Teams:

  • 449.450 MHz Rocky Mountain Radio League Repeater
    • N0NJM Field Coordinator
  • 146.58 MHz Simplex Field Frequency

HF Net:

  • 7.235 MHz no net control set as of this writing

GPS / APRS Experiment:

  • 144.39 MHz

Crossband Repeater:

  • No Crossband Repeater this flight

 


Marty's Email

I include this email as it is the original preface to the above announcement as it was distributed to various news groups, and email lists.

-----Original Message-----
From: eoss@eoss.org
Sent: Monday, November 09, 1998 3:29 PM
Subject: EOSS #37 - Revised Flight Announcement

Revisions

1. The date of this flight is changed from October 31 (bad weather) to November 14 (hopefully better weather) 2. The crossband repeater will not fly, the 147.555 beacon will fly in it's place. The crossband repeater tends to interact with the ATV video and it was decided that the video was more important for the students. 3. MDT is changed to MST

Hi Folks,

The Edge of Space Sciences will fly EOSS #37 this Saturday, October 31 from Windsor Colorado. Launch time will be 8:00 a.m. (MDT) and there will be assorted signals on the amateur frequencies.

If you have any corrections to this announcement, please post them immediately to:

eoss@eoss.org

Thanks, Marty Griffin, WA0GEH, mgriffin@centosystems.com

EOSS #37

The objectives for EOSS #37 will be to familiarize and expose two groups of students with flight operations in preparations for operating their own experiments in future flights. We welcome students from the following groups:

Lockheed/Martin Aerospace Explorers Scouts - This group will have 30-40 students at the launch. They are the primary sponsors of this launch.

Englewood High School Advanced Physics Club - This group will have about 10-15 students at the launch.

The students will learn to manipulate data (temperature, altitude, barometric pressure) into meaningful analysis, charts and reports. Additionally, they will participate in pre-launch activity as well tracking processes. In the future, we hope these students will participate in various missions within the next year, eventually flying their own advanced experiments.

We hope the S.T.A.R.S. student group will operate their base station in Berthoud to track and collect data for the duration of the flight. These students participated several EOSS flights and learned about data collection so they could manage their own tracking and telemetry station.

EOSS was founded to support student science education. We stand to have over about 50 students participating in this event. Congratulations to the members who made this happen.

The Amateur Video Signals from the payload may be picked up by a cable ready TV set on channel 58. However, you need to be very close to the balloon, and have a directional antenna to do this as cable receivers do not have much sensitivity (why should they?). If you don't have a cable ready set, try tuning DOWN from UHF channel 14. Some sets can receive the signal there too.

Almost all our transmitters are on VHF or above frequencies. Therefore, you need to be line of site to the payload to hear/see it. Since the payload rises to an altitude of over 90,000 feet on most missions, reception is usually possible for folks in most of Kansas, most of Nebraska, most of Wyoming, extreme south eastern Idaho, eastern Utah, north eastern Arizona, most of New Mexico, northern Texas, and western Oklahoma. DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED by the apparent low power of our signals. I usually monitor the Beacon with an HT from the ground station throughout the flight. The signal is strong even at 130 miles and I only lose it when the balloon descends below my horizon.

For more details see our web page:

http://www.eoss.org

Here are a few details:

Flight Profile for EOSS #37

LAUNCH DATE: November 14, 1998
LAUNCH TIME: 8:00 MST
LAUNCH SITE: Windsor, Colorado (Thanks to Gene Fatton)

EOSS #37 is on schedule and will launch from Windsor, Colorado at 8:00 am MST. Listen for the beacon on 147.555 and look for ATV on 426.25. The flight should reach 90,000 ft. and the beacons should be heard in a 400 mile radius.

Friday night, November 13, Marty, WA0GEH will conduct the tracking and recovery net on 147.225, 8:00 MST. Logistics for the tracking and recovery operation will be discussed. Please plan to listen in or, if you are interested, joining the effort. Greg, N0ELM is the EOSS Tracking and Recovery leader and will be on the net.

The Tracking and Recovery net will be on 449.450 MHz Saturday, November 14. Starting about 6:00 am logistic traffic will start to flow. This will be become a DIRECTED net, all traffic for the recovery effort will be directed through George, N0NJM.

Again, the instructions for getting to the launch site, (thanks to Ted, N0RQV):

1. Travel !-25 north to exit 262 (Windsor) 2. Exit, travel east 1.5 mi. to a road with no sign, but has power poles. 3 Turn south, travel 0.4 mi to the launch site, a blue barn on the east side of the road.

Visit our Web Page at: www.eoss.org