Chasing Weather Balloons

Recently a number of South East Radio Group members have been tracking weather balloons here in South East South Australia.

A balloon is released automatically from the Mount Gambier Airport each Monday and Thursday morning at 10.45 a.m. local time and if some unusual weather conditions are expected, at any time.

We watch the predicted flight path on Hab Hub Predictor and then track the actual flight path on Hab Hub Tracker. Sometimes the two plots agree and others not very well.

The prediction for yesterdays balloon originally had it landing somewhere near Hamilton but this was revised to a spot just East of Strathdownie in Victoria.

Charles, VK5HD rang me at about 11 a.m. and asked if I was going to chase it or if I might be interested in doing so. As it was not going to be very far from the Mount I suggested that I ring Tom, VK5EE, and invite him as well. Charles agreed and Tom and I met up with him at his home in Mt. Gambier at 1 p.m. and off we went.

After crossing the border on the way to Casterton we turned right onto West Strathdownie Road and then turned right onto McGrath’s Road. We travelled along McGrath’s Road for a short time until our GPS indicated that we were getting close to the landing area.

Charles had his hand held on and tuned to 401.500 Mhz. and right on cue we started to hear the signals from the Sonde. It had landed pretty much exactly where the tracker had placed it. We turn off McGraths road and drove a few hundred metres up along the Western edge of a stand of pine trees and parked.

After climbing over the fence into the paddock Charles thought he could see the Sonde but it turned out to be the wool from a sheep carcass.

Col, VK5HCF thought that he saw it just a bit to the North and so we changed direction and carried on walking. Bingo. There was the Balloon, (in tatters of course), and the parachute. Col traced the flimsy line from the tangled mess of the Balloon back to the actual sonde. The line was surprisingly long, maybe 30 metres or so.

All good. Charles coiled the whole mess up and we carried it all back to the car pretty happy with such an easy recovery.

We were only away for about an hour or so which meant minimal disruption to our day.

S.E.R.G. is now connected to the N.B.N. network.

The Club is once again connected to the internet.
The I.R.L.P. and the remote station are all working properly and there has been a dramatic increase in upload / download speeds.

John, VK5DJ, has updated the Remote Access details on the relevant page of this site.

A huge “Thank you” to Brett of T.D.R.S. for:-

1. Supplying us with excellent internet at no cost.
2. For maintaining the system – also free of charge.
3. Updating the system to the N.B.N.

If you are looking for a new provider – look no further than T.D.R.S. who are, of course, locals. 

Brett, hard at work, setting up our Clubroom’s for the N.B.N.

1296 Beacon Currently off Air

SERG’s 1296 beacon located on Mount Graham is currently off air due to antenna issues. The site was visited by some of the clubs repeater volunteers led by Col VK5DK and assisted by Leith VK5FLAR, Niv VK5NC and Tom VK5NFT. Eventually after a couple trips it was verified a antenna issue. This will be attended to in coming weeks.

Tom VK5NFT on behalf of the website team.

Working bee at The Bluff

Peter VK5BE finding the best spot to get a good photo of the whole cabinet

Peter VK5BE and John VK5DJ visited the VK5RMG site on Monday 7th January 2019. This followed a visit the previous day to install the new link chassis and filters.

The link receiver from Naracoorte was program damaged (it lost its default frequency). A quick burst with the programmer at home and all is sweet. The whole system is now working with a somewhat faster ID. That’ll test your CW skills.

John (showing as Webdev)