10 MHz Amateur Radio balloon to cross the Atlantic

Amateurs at the University of Tennessee Amateur Radio Club are launching a balloon with a beacon in the 10 MHz Amateur Band that may travel across the Atlantic during its 5-day mission.

The latest Icarus X mission UX-19, to launch in the next few weeks, is to be the first in a series of attempts to fly the first Amateur Radio equipped helium balloon across the Atlantic Ocean.

The balloon payload will include a GPS unit and CPU that will regulate the balloon's altitude and send telemetry on 30M and 2M, details will be available on the website regarding frequency, mode and format.

The 10 MHz transmitter will run 3 watts output into a half wave dipole hung below the balloon.

The students need receiving stations to copy the telemetry data. They have developed a decoding program that anyone can download from the University of Tennessee web site which will relay the values back to the campus server.

All that is needed for the receiving station is a good antenna and a computer with a high speed internet connection. Audio from the receiver is feed into the sound card of the computer and The UTARC DTRC software, a modified RTTY decoder, will relay the telemetry information back to Tennessee to generate a nice visual status web page of the flight data.

The flight has been dubbed 'The Spirit Of Knoxville' after Lindbergh's first trans-Atlantic flight.

The balloon will be carrying enough ballast and battery power for up to five days and nights of flight. Check the UT Radio Club's web page at (http://balloon.utarc.org/) for more technical details and a host of photos.

This site chronicles the last years worth of effort at developing the hardware and flight testing the different systems to produce an autonomous altitude control.

In addition to the 30m beacon there will also be an APRS beacon AA4UT-11 on 144.390 MHz FM.

University of Tennessee Amateur Radio Club
http://www.utarc.org/

Distributed Tracking and Relay Client - Telemetry Software
http://www.utarc.org/wiki/index.php/DTRC

Icarus X Summary
http://www.utarc.org/wiki/index.php/
Icarus_X#Icarus_X_Summary

Icarus X pictures
http://www.utarc.org/gallery2/main.php

Note: Unlike other countries the United Kingdom regulator OFCOM does not currently allow UK Radio Amateurs to launch propagation research balloons carrying Amateur Radio transmitters.