From gentle push… to potential game changer
Compliments to Paul KJ5JIO and John AB5SS. Paul instigated the gentle momentum to re-think about our student intern ham radio program, and John generously grabbed the leadership role to kickstart a brand-new balloon program for our student interns.
<John behind inflated balloon>
Background
The club has been supporting JSC Interns with ham radio DIY project each semester.
We typically get 5-12 interns and run them through about 4 project activities including:
- getting a license
- Learning how to solder
- Soldering advanced (w/ SMD)
- Building transmitters
- Fox hunting hidden beacons (both 2m and 80m)
- Antenna building (Yagi, ground planes)
- On-The-Air ops using our HF radios
- HT training and repeater net check in
- Morse code 101
- NOAA decoding
- RTLS SDR radio 101
Every semester, we only enlist a small handful of interested interns to ham radio. We pull out all stops to engage the students, but why can’t we attract more of them, like the scuba club or the rocketry club??
Paul helped initiate a “brainstorming” meeting which we held on May 8th this year with a few of our JSCARC outreach champions. After exchanging ideas, we all liked the idea of promoting a new exciting intern project– use ham radio balloons to DIY develop, test, and launch. YES! Luckily, John AB5SS jumped in to lead, with his 30 +years of balloon expertise.
Why is this a great idea?
It’s hard to excite an intern unless they get their license upfront.
Operating radios, building antennas, learning morse code, transmitter building, etc. all are of marginal excitement unless licensed. Nonetheless, our Soldering 101 class has been a very popular and successful event. Why? Because it resonates with a tangible finished product and learned skill, has DIY appeal, little investment of time and $, and fun
Ballooning- hmmm.
- Requires at least one General Class licensee (from JSCARC mentor or intern) while the others can be non-licensed.
- Use SW programming skills to custom code into the tracker.
- Use soldering skills to add components, and attaching wiring
- Start to finish in only a few meetings
- Launch a personalized balloon and tracking it over the world- exciting!
- FREE
It seems to fit the new Gen Z persona:
- involves digital technology
- immediate results,
- hands-on DIY
- pragmatic
- engages teamwork.
Real lessons about engineering and ham radio:
For us, this is a perfect model to convey fundamental space tenets: optimizing SWAP (Size Weight and Power) and “Fly what your test, and Test what your Fly”. The development, test, integration and launch prep are interestingly like NASA processing of space vehicles.
And the tie into ham radio… These trackers require at least one licensed ham (preferably an intern) to control the tracker. Students also learn to use WSJTX/WSPR to track and monitor the beacon on the ham bands. It’s an onramp to digital radio, LEO satellites, weak signal communications, propagation characteristics, etc.
As any great new adventure begins, there’s the key challenge of getting it done- under constrained resources… TIME.
The fast-track challenge
The decision to press ahead with the balloon project was completely John’s. Initially there were only 3 remaining available weeks to deploy this challenge, based on our schedule of meeting once a week on Tuesdays.
“My original schedule had 2 days + launch day, but as we know, the students were game to come in on Wednesdays also to get the job done. And most worked 3 hours a day. They ended up coming in on July 16th, 23rd, and I think at least a couple on Faheem’s team on the 28th to do final power up testing on the payload. Summary, the students put in probably about 12 hours each plus time on the day of launch to get this done. This was a rushed schedule and not ideal, but we made it work.”
John accepted the challenge and began a fast-track preparation of instruction and immediate parts procurements.
John quickly drafted an Amateur Radio Ballooning 101 booklet. This is a concise “how-to” document based on his 30+ years of his ballooning expertise.
His pragmatic cookbook is intended for the first time flyer, using an off-the-shelf QRP Labs U4B $50 high altitude balloon tracker. This was quite a departure from his many specialized designs of ultralight Pico balloon trackers, but the U4B was an effective and practical solution for a extremely time constrained launch before their semester tour ended.
The U4B still provided the students with lots of work to configure and add custom programming. Additional engineering effort was required to prepare and hand solder enamel and litz small gauge wire leads, add a zener protection diode on the board, add tethered shroud lines, and build, integrate, and test the solar cells, cut a 20m antenna dipole, balance a calibrated fill of hydrogen in the balloon, heat seal the ballon neck, and other special techniques to attach the integrated system together using tried and true tricks that John has learned over the years.
The Intern Teams
Team 1
- Kirstin KI5CWE
- Anthony
- Oscar
Team 2
- Kellen KJ5LYU
- Stella KJ5LYT
- John KF8ENS
- Max KF8ENQ
- Faheem W5FDQ
The compression of work within the originally planned 3 days of work was a risky gamble, but the interns enthusiastically worked extra hours and added additional extra workdays to complete the project in time. Luckily, Jeff AB4ME and Paul KJ5JIO provided supporting assistance to John, as the student teams needed the extra mentors to multitask across the room as scattered tasks were concurrently worked on during each build period.
Unexpected Interest to add fun custom code
John introduced them to a programming feature which allowed a graphical rendering of a symbol when decoded using the WSPR application. Surprising, the student teams found this particularly interesting and enjoyable, and decided to expend extra initiative to custom program their own logos in the beacon signal. Both chose the letters “NASA” as a graphic which would be transmitted and distinctively received across the globe if it survived the travelled distance. The students creatively decomposed their image into a matrix spreadsheet which gave them the relative frequencies for translation into a program of a stream of varying CW tones which rendered the logo beacon signal.
The students were taught how to weigh their payload, calibrate and balance the payloads to the Hydrogen gas content- carefully releasing gas until the targeted lift amount was attained. Each team representative had the opportunity to finalize the sealing of the balloon neck and specially attaching lightweight filament line from the neck to the tracker payload.
The Launch!
John organized the launches in serial fashion. Team 1 launched first, with one student unravelling the 20m dipole, one student holding the payload, and one student holding the balloon. The students were instructed to slowly walk forward in synchronized unison- to release the balloon with the tethered payload and antenna in a graceful lift into the air. as the wind gently tugged at the rising balloon. This was exciting and enthusiastically fulfilling to launch a vehicle.
Team 2 followed as well.
The 3rd balloon was lifted by John’s “get away special” that he built and programmed himself. He had an extra balloon and tracker. Jeff and I had the honor of helping to loft it into the sky.
Mission Accomplished
A huge success and feeling of accomplishment were felt by all. Tracking the balloons was exciting. Over the next few hours and days, we left the students to fulfill their final exits from their respective organizations, knowing they would try to continue tracking their own space craft.
Ultimately, only one of the balloons continued to send its beacon signal. Last seen by the coast of Mexico near Acapulco, signals went silent. Surprisingly, 8 days later, one of the balloon’s signal reappeared over central Texas only to have disappeared again as this blog is written.
We’re anxiously looking forward to the next iteration of this new exciting outreach activity.