High-altitude balloon OH3VHH-1 launch and flight

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.

High-altitude balloon flight OH3VHH-1 overview

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.

High-altitude balloon flight: OH3VHH-1

Latest update: August 3rd 2021

Planned launch time is on Saturday, July 17th between 7:00-8:00 UTC. We will begin flight preparations already at 6:00 UTC. In case we need to cancel the flight because of bad weather, we will attempt to launch the balloon again either on Sunday, July 18th or on Saturday, July 31st.

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.

Building Raspberry Pi HAB radio tracker software (part 4): OH3BHX-11-1 balloon 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.

Building Raspberry Pi HAB radio tracker software (part 3): LoRa range and battery life tests

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.

Building Raspberry Pi HAB radio tracker software (part 2): Embedded Radio Tracker

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.