Announcement of EOSS-34

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: April 25, 1998
LAUNCH TIME: 14:00 UTC, 08:00 MDT
LAUNCH SITE:  Windsor, Colorado (Gene Fatton's Ranch - Here's a Map) 

LAUNCH SITE COORDINATES:

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

EXPECTED TRACK:

• East

FLIGHT EXPERIMENTS:

• University of Colorado, telemetry and data collection, analysis, reports
• EOSS APRS Experiments
• S.T.A.R.S. group telemetry education session
• C.A.P.. Flight Tracking and Reporting

FREQUENCIES:

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

Launch Site:

• 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 Team

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

APRS Experiment

• 144.39 MHz (New Freq!)

Marty's Email

Actually, this is a Marty Griffin Email as forwarded along by a Greg Burnett, K0ELM, 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: GREG_BURNETT
Sent: Monday, April 20, 1998 9:10 PM
To: FATTON_GENE
Cc: mgriffin
Subject: EOSS #34 Flight Announcement 4/25

Gene, We're on target for flight this Saturday.

Note: The University of Colorado will provide food, and the students will bring it to the launch site.

Do you want the portable toilet placed same as for last flight?

I'll make sure you're called Friday evening if there's a scrub; otherwise assume 50 students will be at your ranch Saturday morning.

Marty, Do the students expect to cook any of their food at Gene's ranch?

Do we have the same arrangements for the portable toilet?

As you know I can't make the flight, but I'll try to check-in Friday night at 8PM.

Regards, Greg

Forward Header
Subject: EOSS #34 Flight Announcement 4/25
Author: mgriffin
Date: 4/18/98 11:06 PM

Hi Folks,

The Edge of Space Sciences will fly EOSS #34 this Saturday, April 25 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@DEAD_SYSTEM_centosystems.com

(webmaster note: dead email server, check the website Email List Server page for current email lists)

The objectives for EOSS 34 will be to familiarize and expose aerospace engineering students from the University of Colorado - Boulder, with the data provided by the EOSS Shuttle. The students will learn to manipulate data (temperature, altitude, barometric pressure) into meaningful analysis, charts and reports. These students will participate in various missions for the next four years of their curriculum, eventually flying their own advanced experiments. We expect 30-50 CU students at the launch site. Congratulations to Jack Crabtree, AA0P, for developing this relationship with our friends at C.U.

Special Notice to Gene Fatton and Greg Burnett: The students will bring food, it will be furnished by CU.

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 in EOSS #33 and learned about data collection so they could manage their own tracking and telemetry station. The hope to calibrate altitude with using tones emmitted from one of the experiments. These calibration results will be used for the next two flights. We expect about 12-18 S.T.A.R.S. students for this event.

A new group of students, sponsored by Cy Jenkins, WD0GRH and the Civil Air Patrol, will track from the launch site and participate in the tracking and recovery data reporting. We expect 8-12 students. Welcome C.A.P.!

EOSS was founded to support student science education. We stand to have over 70 students participating in this event. Congratulations to the members who made this happen.

The AA0P dedicated APRS experiment will fly again. These experiments will ultimately contribute to an APRS experiment used by the tracking and recovery team to dynamically locate, on a map, the location of all field folks.

The dedicated APRS system is a KPC-3 flying with a DeLorme Tripmate GPS and a two meter transceiver. It is a separate payload. You can digi your position by setting your unproto to "aprs via eoss". Keep your position beacons to a minimum (once every 30 minutes for stationary folks, and mobiles not directly involved in recovery, once every 5 minutes). The recovery team, will be using this capability to keep track of each other and need the bandwidth for much more frequent beacons.

EOSS Shuttle controllers now beacon on the packet telemetry frequency with an APRS position string. If you are running APRS you should be able to graphically track the progress of the flight on the "CODENVER.MAP" map file. The Shuttle is not a TNC equipped packet station. It only reads data from various sensors and experiments and formats and transmits that data in AX.25. Therefore, beacons from other APRS stations will NOT be retransmitted (digi). So, in order to minimize possible interference with hams in your area, we request you turn off the position beacons at your APRS station. Thanks!

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.

Here are a few details:

LAUNCH DATE: April 25, 1998
LAUNCH TIME: 8:00 MDT
LAUNCH SITE: Windsor, Colorado (Thanks to Gene Fatton)

EOSS #34 is on schedule and will launch from Windsor, Colorado at 8:00 am MDT. 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, April 24, 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, April 25. 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.usa.net/~rickvg/eoss.htm

webmaster note: the above URL was the original home of the Eoss Web site. I left it in for nostalgic and historical purposes. It no longer exists and clicking on it will only take you to the new domain name holder's advertisement page.

webmaster note: Flight Profile for EOSS-34 moved to top of page and reformatted.