[South Florida DX Association] Interesting Event

[Irwin Wallace]

I received this information from several people. I found it interesting 
and wanted to share it.
                   
                            Irwin, N4IEW

    On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 3:18 PM, kg4psd<felipe.felipec at gmail.com 
<mailto:felipe.felipec%40gmail.com>> wrote:
 > A student high altitude balloon launch from Kennedy Space Center 
(KSC) is scheduled to fly with an new amateur radio communications 
payload on 17 July 2009.  Release is planned to occur at 1330 UTC.  The 
new payload features S- Band and 2m downlinks developed by AMSAT 
volunteers working together with educators from the Florida Space Grant 
Consortium and Florida Space Institute.
 >
 > The 2m downlink will be transmitting APRS formatted position and 
telemetry data. The S-band downlink will be transmitting FM video from 
an onboard camera.  In addition the audio channel of the S-band downlink 
will have the same AFSK being sent on 2m.
 >
 > As the balloon rises at 1000 feet per minute, eventually approaching 
an altitude near 100,000 feet, most of the State of Florida will be 
within the footprint and the anticipated views from the edge of space 
are expected to be spectacular.  It is also expected that most stations 
within the footprint, especially those with modest gain antennas, will 
be able to copy the 2m downlink fairly easily.
 >
 > The downlink details are as follows:
 >
 > 2m:  144.990 MHz, 300 mW, 1200 baud AFSK/APRS/Telemetry
 > 12cm:  2413 MHz, 1w, FM NTSC video, 1200 baud AFSK audio
 >
 > The launch site is located at 28 31.45N, 80 40.97W
 >
 > If you want to see some video's of the annual Dutch Balloon Foxhunt
have a look at:
http://www.ch73.net/indexgb.html <http://www.ch73.net/indexgb.html>
Click on "Video On-Demand" and either on "Balloon Fox Hunt Reports" or
"Balloon Fox Hunt 2008 ATV transmission via PI6ATV"
Currently the site is streaming video of the 2003 balloon Fox Hunt.