Slow Scan TV from the edge of space

Ed M0TEK and James M6JCX bring news of an amateur radio Slow Scan TV transmission on 434.075MHz USB that'll take place from a high altitude balloon at 30km on Thursday, June 17.

In addition to the 434.075MHz USB SSTV transmissions there's another telemetry beacon on 434.650MHz USB.
At high altitude the balloon may be receiveable by stations up to 300 kilometers away.

Ed and James write:

Just to announce that there is going to be a balloon launch Thursday, June 17, from Churchill, Cambridge at ~ 11:00BST. Onboard will be Nova 18 consisting of the CUSF Ferret tracker and a school experiment and also there will be Pegasus VII a SSTV payload. Normal flight profile is expect, burst altitude just over 30km landing just South West of Milton Keynes.

1) Nova 18 contains the CUSF Ferret Arduino Tracker consisting of a SIRF III GPS, ATmega168 and NTX2 10mW Radio on 434.650MHz. To track this select 'ferret' in dl-fldigi and tune to 434.650Mhz USB. This will be the main tracker with continous telemetry - however as it uses a SIRF III GPS it will stop working above 24km and resume on descent.

2) Pegasus VII is a gumstix based SSTV payload. It will be transmitting an image every 3 minutes and in between will be 6 strings of RTTY telemetry. To track Pegasus VII select 'pegvii' in dl-fldigi.

Pegasus VII is transmitting on 434.075MHz USB. To decode the images there are a number programs available - on Windows MMSSTV, Mac OSX Multiscan and Linux Qsstv. It is possible also to run MMSSTV in wine.

Currently the base station setup is to run dl-fldigi and MMSSTV in wine at the same time, they will only decode their own signal. Pegasus VII has a ublox GPS so will work above 24km however the telemetry will have gaps due to the downlinked image.

Tracking is very welcome, both old and new dl-fldigi will work - we are starting to move to using the new dl-fldigi so if you want to test that out feel free, more info can be found on the UKHAS wiki: http://ukhas.org.uk/projects:dl-fldigi

As usual the flight path will be on http://spacenear.us/tracker and chat will be on #highaltitude on irc.freenode.net .

It'll also be possible to follow progress on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/jamescoxon and we'll be using the #tags of #cusf and #pegvii

Thanks

Ed Moore, M0TEK, James Coxon, M6JCX,
and the rest of the CUSF team

UKHAS on Google Groups
http://groups.google.com/group/ukhas/

There is a video of a presentation that Cambridge University Spaceflight gave to the AMSAT-UK Colloquium last year called "Teddy Bears in Space" you can watch it online at http://www.batc.tv/channel.php?ch=1
From the Archive List select 2009 Amsat Teddy Bear

Or download a copy of the video at
http://www.batc.tv/vod/Teddys.flv

AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium, Guildford
July 31 - Aug 1
http://www.uk.amsat.org/colloquium/

AMSAT-UK publishes a colour A4 newsletter, OSCAR News, which is full of Amateur Satellite information.
Join online at https://secure.amsat.org.uk/subs_form/