a-dutch-balloon-launchAt around 1100 GMT on Sunday, Sept 11, a Dutch High Altitude Balloon will launch with a UHF/VHF FM transponder, 23cm ATV transmitter and beacon, the range should be over 500 km.

The weather balloon will be launched from the Netherlands, amateur radio stations in nearby countries have to wait a while to hear the signals until the balloon reach a higher altitude! (the maximal altitude might reach 30km it also did in the past!).

Balloon transmitters frequency information:
Beacon:  145.450 MHz (100 mW FM/N).
FM crossband voice transponder uplink: 432.550 MHz downlink: 145.475 MHz (1 Watt FM/N).
ATV video transmitter 1252 MHz (1 Watt FM, camera looking down to earth).
The balloon camera video stream can be world wide seen on the website (see the urls below).

Ground control stations:
PI4RCG      7.080 kHz, 3.650 kHz (+/- 10kHz QRM).
PI2NOS    430.125 MHz (+1.6 Shift) ground repeater in the Netherlands (also audible via echolink).
PI3UTR    145.575 MHz (-0.6 Shift / 77Hz) ground repeater in the Netherlands (also audible via echolink).

The official balloon fox hunt website and social media websites:
http://www.pi6atv.com/ live video from the balloon camera
https://www.ballonvossenjacht.nl (you can choose the English language from the menu).
http://www.facebook.com/ballonvossenjacht
https://twitter.com/ballonvosjacht (often with quick update news messages!).

73’s Cor PD0RKC