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LOHAN's mighty orb launch live NOW

SPEARS board off to menace Blighty from 80,000ft

Today's Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) balloon launch is go, and you can follow the ground preparations in Berkshire live right now, right here - courtesy of the chaps at batc.tv

There are full details on the mission team and payload here. To summarise, the primary objective is to see whether our Special Project Electronic Altitude Release System (SPEARS) control board will indeed fire a rocket motor igniter at a test altitude of 24,500m (80,380ft).

Once we're off the ground, you can follow the action at spacenear.us/tracker, thanks to Alexei Karpenko, who's braced his servers against the extra traffic.

We have four distinct trackers dangling from the mighty, hydrogen-filled orb, as follows:

  • SPEARS board: $$SPEARS 434.073Mhz 50 baud RTTY shift 500 8N1
  • Flying truss: $$TRUSS 434.225Mhz 100 baud RTTY 500 shift 7N2
  • Iridium satellite: $$ROCK
  • Iridium RTTY: $$ROLL 434.650Mhz 100 baud RTTY 450 shift 7N2

People with the right kit are warmly invited to assist with remote tracking. You'll need a radio receiver capable of receiving USB (Upper side band transmissions) on 70cms (434Mhz). There's a full tracking guide here, and those with Funcubes/SDRs should check this out first.

Direct any questions to the IRC channel irc.freenode.net#highaltitude. There's a web client here. Bear in mind stated frequencies may change according to circumstances.

All being well, we'll have recovered the payload and hit the pub before it gets dark. We'll let you know how we got on as soon as the dust has settled. ®


Further LOHAN resources:

  • New to LOHAN? Try this mission summary for enlightenment.
  • You can find full LOHAN coverage right here.
  • Join the expert LOHAN debate down at Reg forums.
  • All the LOHAN and Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) vids live on YouTube.
  • For our SPB photo archive, proceed directly to Flickr.
  • We sometimes indulge in light consensual tweeting, as you can see here.

LOHAN - A Special Projects Bureau production in association with...

  • 3T RPD logo
  • University of Southampton logo
  • Applied Vacuum Engineering logo
  • Escher Technologies
  • Flashpoint Fireworks logo
  • HAB Supplies logo
  • Rock 7 logo

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