Follow along here:
This Friday March 21, 2025 at 5:15 PM PDT Mt Carmel High School students are planning a balloon launch from a local San Diego elementary school. The 4FSK tracking payload will use Mt. Carmel Ham club’s callsign of W6SUN.
This balloon launch will be part of the elementary school’s STEM night event. After the balloon launch, the Mt. Carmel High School students will answer questions about the balloon launch, and talk about the high school ham radio club as part of the STEM event.
The plan is to fly a 200g balloon with a 4FSK tracking payload and a camera payload. We expect the balloon to reach about 20 km to 25 km in altitude. Current predictions indicate the flight path will be towards the southeast and likely will land in Mexico.
The payloads are recovered and reprogrammed NOAA Weather Service RS-41 Radiosondes. There are no plans to recover these payloads.
If you have a ground station in the San Diego area, we would appreciate your configuring it for 4FSK mode Friday prior to launch.
Some Background from Randy, KQ6RS…
“I compiled a five minute video of the seven weather balloons launched by seven new Technician license holders in the club. Since we currently have seven RTL-SDR receivers on Otay and Toro, we were able to simultaneously receive seven different frequencies (431.010 to 431.070 MHz in 10 kHz steps). Each student filled their ballon and launched their transmitter, a reprogrammed Vaisala RS41 radiosonde. Good thing there are a couple of crazy guys who go almost anywhere to collect used NOAA radiosondes to maintain an inventory of them.”
Mt Carmel High School’s amateur radio club is launching a series of weather balloons on Saturday Feb 15 at about 11:15am. There are seven balloons that will be launched at 15 minute intervals. Each will be launched by a recently licensed student.
Come out to the April 19 San Diego Luncheon for a presentation by Randy!
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