[W6YRA] arko balloon update & misc shack stuff

[Ryan Caron]

Good day today. Tracked the arko balloon from start to finish, which was a nice real-time demonstrated on thermal/frequency instabilities. We collected a lot of pictures from the balloon, as well as position packets, but the positions were usually thrown out due to checksum errors. 

Since other stations were also tracking, and we were able to talk to the balloon owner, we determined the errors are actually the result of a bug on the balloon's microcontroller, and not indicative of a bad RF link.

The balloon stopped transmitting at burst again, but we were able to track the carrier the whole time. Surprisingly the RTTY data resumed at some point on descent, which indicated the microcontroller restarted. More pictures came down, but no GPS.

Once again it went to carrier, and quickly faded away, which we interpret as it hitting the ocean.

Unfortunately the UHF satellite yagi's coax fell apart again this afternoon, so we're lucky we were able to track today. Practice makes perfect.



Other activities
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We made a lot of progress on assembly of the R-8 HF vertical, but we haven't finished (or taken down the old one). 

We also significantly reduced the amount of loose sand on the roof from the degraded sandbags.

And, of course, more repeater stuff, which is the subject of another email.