[SBhams] Spirit of Knoxville

[Ron]

Hello All:

Spirit of Knoxville promises that next transatlantic flight attempt will be
before 2008. Their first attempt only went about 100 miles out into the
Atlantic. It really traveled about 500 miles in about 10 hours before it
went down. See their site http://spiritofknoxville.com/index.html for more
info. They have some pictures of the balloon and some of the radio package
that was from the first flight. They also have a email signup for future
launches.


Here is what was on the first flight:

Purpose: - First Trans-Atlantic flight test.
- Zero Pressure float at 42,000ft, 940 cu ft balloon by Mark Caviezel
- 6lb ballast drop.
- Test of HF RTTY/CW and 2m APRS telemetry reception.

This flight, the Spirit of Knoxville I, will take a balloon far and fast
out over the ocean - uncharted territory for us, so we don't really know
what will happen to this balloon... If it doesn't make it, we'll keep
trying every few weeks until we do.

144.390 (AA4UT-11) APRS (while over the US)
10.122 RTTY/CW Telemetry TBD (while outside of US and UK)

Schedule/Interval

* VHF APRS: position and every 21 seconds, telemetry every 63 seconds
* HF RTTY Daytime: position and telemetry on the following minutes
past the hour: 0 10 20 30 40 50
* HF CW Daytime: position on the following minutes past the hour: 5
15 35 45
* HF RTTY Nighttime: position and telemetry on the following minutes
past the hour: 0 30
* HF CW Nighttime: position on the following minutes past the hour:
15 45

UTARC is asking shortwave listeners and amateur operators to participate
by downloading the Distributed Tracking and Relay Client, or DTRC. The
DTRC is pre-programmed to relay the telemetry received by the 30m RTTY
transmissions back to the UTARC server via the internet. Users download
the software and install, then tune in to the UTARC balloon's RTTY
signal, and the information will be relayed back to UTARC's server for
analysis. The more stations participating, the better the chances of
hearing the signal.

K5AI / Ron Porter