weather balloon portable

[torba]

Hi,
I've been looking months now for a perfect way to track a weather balloon. But the transmitter has to cheap and simple. I've been thinking about using the pixie 2 QRP kit (with a microchip keying my call sign and the balloons GPS coords), the pixie is great for this since it is only ten bucks and runs off a 9 volt battery. The only problem is what kind of antenna would go on a weather balloon that is perfect for 80 meters? Any suggestions on antenna or a different transmitter that I should use?

[5B4AJB]

How about a full size dipole with the transmitter hanging in the middle?

Usually the transmitters are 2m or 70cm I think. Never done a balloon myself, but always wanted to fly a kite with a full size H.F. vertical antenna.

Hmmm, this gets me wondering, should I make a box kite and fly it at the beach, it's always windy enough there & plenty of room for groundplane wires.

Be prepared to lose some kit on the trip down, terminal velocity sometimes has that effect...

[Prime]

Hi there ...

First post in this forum but thought it might be fun to participate.

I've been using kites to lift antennas ever since I got my licence about 12 months ago.

I originally though that bigger/longer antennas were better but soon encountered huge swr problems that required fairly heavy baluns and matching gear.

I came up with a coax dipole design of my own that was is essence so simple yet it was easy to lift and easy to tune but also importantly, it was easy to feed because it was a vertical end fed antenna. The actual propagation was excellent and I have had many hours of fun with it.

I have often sat in the middle of a field or on a beach with my box or delta kites lifting my 40m antenna vertically straight up in the air.

The beach is usually a great location for kite flying because of the constant wind ... I've had my kite up in the air for periods of several hours at a time.

I settled for box or delta kites because they present a fairly steep "atack angle" (they sit quite high on the wind) and they can be scaled up to lift quite large/long antennas. Both box and delta kites also fly in a very stable almost stationary position so they wont make the antenna "travel" from your central transceiver location.

All in all, kites and portable radio makes for a fun combination of sun, surf, and radio.

Cheers

VK4KYT (yes KYT sounds like kite:) )

[Rick Blane]

Hi,
I've been looking months now for a perfect way to track a weather balloon. But the transmitter has to cheap and simple. I've been thinking about using the pixie 2 QRP kit (with a microchip keying my call sign and the balloons GPS coords), the pixie is great for this since it is only ten bucks and runs off a 9 volt battery. The only problem is what kind of antenna would go on a weather balloon that is perfect for 80 meters? Any suggestions on antenna or a different transmitter that I should use?


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[5B4AJB]

a coax dipole design

Come on then, out with it! That'd make a great article... (plus I want to have a go)