eHam.net News

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Pico Balloon Detected Circumnavigating the Earth:

Posted: 26 Dec 2015 04:23 PM PST
http://www.eham.net/articles/35861


The Aussie solar powered pico balloon PS-56 that had a catastrophic GPS
tracking failure, has been tracked by its weak CW signal, having encircled
the southern hemisphere. It was put up by Andy Nguyen VK3YT from Melbourne
on Saturday November 28, who said it passed the usual pre-flight tests, but
shortly after it went up there were no WSPR or JT9 packets, but the balloon
payload sent the default Morse code sequence only. That situation has been
likened to the historical docudrama film on the Apollo 13 moon mission
which used the phrase, 'Houston, we have a problem'. Andy VK3YT put out a
call for a watch-out for the balloon. Not giving up easily, hard-core VK
and ZL trackers took up the challenge. The ingenuity of radio amateurs
trackers has enabled this balloon flight to be tracked without a working
GPS. He explained that using the Sun greyline at sunset and sunrise,
antenna bearing and wind prediction, the balloon position could be
estimated. PS-56 was tracked like this continuously for a week by Bob
ZL1RS, before it got to South America, and went out of range. However by
December 13 it popped up again on his waterfall, and tracking resumed. Bob
ZL2RS further narrowed the position down to between South America and South
Africa. Fast forward to Saturday December 19, John VK2FAK and Joe VK5EI
spotted PS-56 with strong signal strength. Then on last Sunday December 20
in the morning Bob ZL1RS he had the position PS-56 based on the limited
data available.


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No 60-Meter Operation Possible in VK:

Posted: 26 Dec 2015 04:23 PM PST
http://www.eham.net/articles/35860


While the Amateur Service gained a new band at 5 MHz at the World
Radiocommunication Conference last November, it won't be available in
Australia and many other countries for quite a while. In Australia, a
number of land-mobile and defence licensees have long had primary status in
the 5 MHz band. The Australian Communications and Media Authority is aware
of the decision made by WRC-15 at Geneva, and expects future discussion on
it with the Wireless Institute of Australia. Until the ACMA agrees through
the Australian Radiofrequency Spectrum Plan or the Licence Condition
Determination, no VK radio amateur is allowed to use those frequencies.