Managed to set up an account with BOC and ordered a large L size cylinder of balloon gas. This came with a balloon filler attachment which, although adequate, would benefit from having an extension hose attached to allow the filling to occur away from the cylinder. I will try to track a 3 meter low pressure hose down from a local scuba diving shop I know in Bradford.
Today must have been my lucky day. I was searching on Ebay for a cylinder trolley to hold the helium cylinder and there it was with 15 mins left to go and no bidders. Throwing caution to the wind I immediately placed my bid for the lowest amount (£65) and then patiently waited the next fifteen minutes. As you would imagine there isn’t exactly a large second hand market for cylinder trolleys and indeed no one else placed a bid. Hey presto I was now the proud new owner of a cylinder trolley. Now all I had to do was drive the 3.5 hour round trip from Wakefield to Morecambe to collect it. I must have looked a sight hurtling down the motorway at 70+ with large cylinder trolley attached to the roof bars, but what the hell I was happy. When I got home I excitedly loaded up my cylinder into the trolley and got the whole family out to have a look at my new purchase. Needless to say the wife didn’t quite share my same level of enthusiasm.
Realising that I need to track my payload using radio signals I embarked on a mission to find a suitable radio which would see me well into my ballooning hobby. I phoned around a few of the on-line ham radio shops until I got to Radioworld . Now these guys were very helpful. They listened to exactly what I wanted to do with the radio and what I planed to do in the future and then recommended with justification that I went for the Yaesu FT-817ND. I have to admit not really knowing anything about radios at this point but it seemed to meet my needs so the order was placed. When it arrived it certainly looked the business. I spent the next six hours trying to find something to listen to on the air but I really was not getting anywhere fast. I eventually found a local repeater on 145.787.50 and heard a little conversation taking place. I think I’m going to get hooked on the radio as a separate hobby from ballooning. Anyhow I have decided to enrol on a foundation course so that I can obtain a call sign to legally allow me to transmit on my radio.
Having got the radio set up the next challenge was to use it to receive communications from the payload. The first step was to get hold of a transmitter. Now the Ofcom rules state that you can only transmit at 10 milliwatts from an aerial platform and only on a licence free frequency. Thankfully Radiometrix make just such a module transmitting on 434.650.10MHz. A little bit of reading about various ways to transmit data over radio lead me into realms of Morse code (continuous wave), radio Teletype (rtty) and sstv. Now the easiest and perhaps oldest way of radio communication is via Morse code and given that it is the easiest thing to program I quickly settled on using Morse code to send back information from the payload to ground control.
Apparently, thought it should be obvious, you can’t just send payloads off up into the sky without first seeking permission from the Civil Aviation Authority.
GPS
Tracker
Spherachute
