Project Horus: 2011 beyond
The Project Horus blog has been rather quiet in the last couple of months - this is a bit of an update to let everyone know the project hasn't stalled or died (rather real life just got in the way of ballooning).
The team have given a couple of talks at amateur radio clubs in the last couple of weeks - talks were held at both NERC and AREG.
Mark, Adrian & Joel have been busy in the last few weeks, recovering & hacking Vaisala RS92 Radiosondes with a view to modifying them to work on the amateur 70cm band. Some great progress has been made, with the sondes successfully being reprogrammed to transmit within the band and broadcast an amateur callsign.
Hacking the RS92
We've also been working away on a remoter receive site to be used during launches & for general ham use. The system is based around the excellent Funcube Dongle, a surprisingly capable USB software defined radio receiver. When finished, we hope to have an autonomous tracking station for Horus launches as well as a remotely accessible wideband receiver.
There are also a few plans for future launches this year - one of the main goals is to launch a reasonably powerful amateur TV transmitter, broadcasting video footage from an onboard camera in real time. We're hoping to launch some test payloads soon to test various heatsinks & work out exactly how much heat we can dissipate (and hence how powerful a transmitter we can use).
Stay tuned for more! 