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The high-altitude balloon flight OH3HAB #7, launched on September 2nd 2023 by amateur radio club OH3AA in Hämeenlinna, Finland, was a special flight with two new technical experiments: a RadSens radiation sensor based on a Geiger tube and an image transmitter using the Wenet modulation. The flight payloads included a Vaisala RS41 radiosonde that was repurposed for amateur radio use and a Raspberry Pi Zero W with a Uputronics LoRa board to transmit photographs. With the transmissions of the position and image data available for anyone to receive easily, tracking of the flight became a true community effort!

Repurposing radiosondes for amateur radio high-altitude balloon tracking was a presentation I gave at VUSHF2022, the 42nd Nordic V/U/SHF meeting held between 26th and 29th of May 2022 at Kristalliranta, Säkylä, Finland. The presentation describes the hardware of Vaisala RS41 radiosondes, discusses why they are useful for amateur radio hobbyists and, finally, gives instructions on how to find your own radiosonde - an STM32 microcontroller board fallen from the sky! The presentation slides are available here for download.

The OH3VHH-1 high-altitude balloon flight was a success: the balloon launch was smooth and tracking of the balloon worked mostly without glitches. This post consists mainly of photos, telling the story of the flight from the launch site to the payload recovery. These photos include a large set of high-resolution images from upper atmosphere taken by the Raspberry Pi tracker hardware in the balloon payload.

OH3VHH is the call sign for an amateur radio high-altitude balloon flight organized by Hämeenlinnan Radioamatöörit amateur radio club, call sign OH3AA, in Finland. The primary purpose of the flight is to be a scientific experiment: to test a variety of radio transmitters for tracking the balloon and to record video and photos during the flight.

This is the fourth and the final part of a series of blog posts that follow and document my first attempt to launch a high-altitude balloon (HAB) to perform aerial photography. This post describes the final steps needed to prepare for a balloon launch and — most importantly — includes photos and videos from the balloon launch and flight on August 20, 2017.

This is the third part of a series of blog posts that follow and document my first attempt to launch a high-altitude balloon (HAB) to perform aerial photography. The posts are focused on developing Linux-based software on Raspberry Pi for tracking high-altitude balloons. This post presents the results of LoRa radio transmission tests to determine the maximum range of the transmissions of the high-altitude balloon tracker device I have built.

This is the second part of a series of blog posts that follow and document my attempt to launch a high-altitude balloon (HAB) to perform aerial photography. The posts are focused on developing Linux-based software on Raspberry Pi for tracking high-altitude balloons. This post documents the internals of the tracker software called Embedded Radio Tracker.

This is the first part of a series of blog posts that follow and document my first attempt to launch a high-altitude balloon (HAB) to perform aerial photography. The posts are focused on developing Linux-based software on Raspberry Pi for tracking high-altitude balloons.