Recap of EOSS-68/69

Recap of EOSS-68/69

Each flight has a page dedicated to it to cover individual idiosyncrasies. Common information for both flights found here.

LAUNCH DATE: July 12, 2003
LAUNCH TIME: See individual Flight Recaps
LAUNCH SITE: Deer Trail (directions)


EOSS Frequencies:

  • Preflight Net:
    • 147.225 MHz 8 pm MDT preceding Friday night
      • 145.160 MHz simulcast in the Springs
    • 146.640 MHz will serve as a backup frequency
  • Tracking and Recovery Operations
    • 448.450 MHz 100 Hz tone (primary EOSS T&R Repeater) Pikes Peak FM Association
    • 146.550 MHz simplex (same simplex for field and launch ops)
  • HF Net during Flight
    • 7228 KHz (see notes about this freq)
    •  starting at 12:15 UTC (6:15am MST)

CU Frequencies:

  • The Vans will be using Family Radio Service (FRS) channel 8 - 467.5265 MHz
  • Backup FRS channel 1 - 462.5625

Internet Gateway Stations:

For W5VSI-11

  • K�QED - Lee Inman
  • K�YG-7 - Mark Patton
  • KI�KN -James Cizek
  • K�UT - Bill Beach

For K�ANI-11

  • K�YG-7 - Mark Patton
  • KI�KN -James Cizek

For K�YUK-11

  • K�QED - Lee Inman
  • K�YG-7 - Mark Patton
  • K�UT-3 - Bill Beach
  • K�ANI-9 - Larry Cerney (automated home station)

EOSS wishes to express our sincere appreciation to those stations above who iGated the balloon APRS telemetry onto the internet.

We are relying heavily on real time position information available on the net to allow the FAA controllers to have up to the minute location data to assist them in traffic control.

The backup stations for each balloon provide excellent coverage. If you go to findu.eoss.org and enter in the callsigns of any of EOSS's APRS payload systems to retrieve the raw position data you will note that all of these stations contribute to the flow of information. And in the event of a station dropping out momentarily, the others pick up the slack quite nicely.

Thanks again guys! The FAA (and EOSS) are very grateful for your assistance in this endeavor.

Larry Cerney captured the map output of APRS+SA


EOSS Grid:

Location Grid X Grid Y
Punkin Center 25 10
Kit Carson 74.5 4.5
Deer Trail 6.5 62.5
Stratton 84 41.5
Predicted Landing 39 25.6

Suggested N�LP Grid Calculator Reference Point:

Since Punkin Center is located on a predefined (scoped by trackers with GPS) latitude Longitude you might consider using that as your reference point.

The lat/long is:

  • 38.852083 decimal degrees north
  • 103.70053 decimal degrees west

And that would be associated with Marty's X/Y coordinates of 25,10 as shown above


Photos:


Recaps:

Trackers

by  Benjie Campbell, W�CBH

Well, another great morning for station bravo of the recovery team. The weather was fantastic and the scenery was superb.

We started the adventure at 4:30 am by picking up my driver, then we took off for Limon, CO. We traveled out I-70, and the sunrise was fantastic. We did our usual kibitzing banter on the different repeaters while en route to Limon, where we refueled the jeep and met the other three team members of the T&R team.

We had a short gathering at the Mickey Dee's and then proceeded onto our assigned locations which were given to us by Marty, WA0GEH.The first balloon had been launched while we were inside the MD's so we all scrambled to get to our locations.

The trackers for the day were Mike Morgan-N5LPZ, Larry Noble-N0NDM, Benjie Campbell-W0CBH, Jim-K0JLZ, and the tracking coordinator, Marty-WA0GEH.

Although we were short of trackers on this two balloon flight, things seem to come together very well.

My computer wasn't working well again and I was unable to get the GPS to work with Nick's program or with APRS+SA. It was later found to be a bad cable from the GPS unit to the D700.

We took several bearings upon Marty's schedule and then the first balloon burst and Jim and Larry recovered the payload.

Several civilians were removing the packages from the field. When Jim and Larry arrived on scene they acted like the proverbial Deer caught in the spotlight.

The second balloon was soon to follow and was recovered without incident.

APRS was used by two of the four trackers, bad cable on my end, and Mike didn't have a laptop in the field. His car's battery failed him, and he got a jump from Jim to get him going at the end of the flights. A set of jumper cables will soon be added to my jeep's supply of needed equipment.

The trackers then met at a cafe in Limon to recap the flights and a good time was had by all.

Dave-KB0LP, and Larry-K0ANI met the rest of the tracking team and we all had lunch. This was at 10:00 am or thereabouts. One of the earliest lunches we've ever had.

I don't know how accurate the bearings given were, maybe Marty has a story about that. The beacons on the two balloons were all heard well, and we used two different bands to track them, so our two meter and 440 capability has evolved. We had time to train my driver (Carla) to take bearings, which she enjoyed learning about.

The next addition to the jeep will be a laptop stand/table hopefully similar to KB0YRZ's. This will improve the reduction of clutter campaign I am waging. Improvements to equipment are continuing and the lessons learned will be incorporated. I now have two GPS receivers which are used in the field and will add another dual band radio as a backup feature. That will make three dual banders in the jeep, I am running out of power capability and room. Help.

 


Notes:

HF Radio

Sparky Ullmer KA�DPC, was our HF net control.

We try and start an HF net approximately 45 minutes prior to launch on 7.228 MHz. If that frequency is busy we try 7.235 or 7.240 MHz.