VE3KCL is another and has been lofting balloons like this for some time.

Currently his S-18 aloft and heading out over the Atlantic, near real time tracking here:

http://www.qrp-labs.com/flights/s18.html callsign is VE3OCL

And he has his S-19 pending, perhaps release tomorrow, near real time tracking here:

http://www.qrp-labs.com/flights/s19.html callsign will be VE3KCL

the unique way that WSPR is used in order to provide telemetry is through the use of a so called telemetry frame. These frames have a callsign which starts with a 0 (zero) and the third character denotes which telemetry channel is being used and is unique to each flight. In the case of S18 the telemetry frame will use channel 3 and it's callsign will start as 0.3... where the . represent other characters which will be decoded to extract additional details. S19 will use telemetry channel 2

SM0ULC David, has written a program to extract the WSPR frames and upload tracking information to HabHub, links on on the above noted web pages

more details of the telemetry and previous flights can be found here:

http://www.qrp-labs.com/flights.html

cheers, Graham ve3gtc

On 2016-10-08 01:14, Stewart Todd Morgan wrote:

Just so folks are aware, some amateur radio balloons have been using WSPR in conjunction with APRS in order to track global flights. For example, W7QO has used WSPR transmitters on solar powered floater flights at about 13000 meters/40000 ft. The data are collected using the global WSPR network, and then an APRS posit is created to make the balloon's position available.

If you look at https://tracker.habhub.org at the present time, you can see one W7QO's balloons (the HIRFW-6 flight presently near the Mediterranean Sea) that use use this WSPR/APRS combination. The balloon is transmitting WSPR on 20 meters, and you can see it on the WSPR map, although the WSPR call changes (I believe it depends on position). HIRFW-5 is another such flight that is currently aloft.

Todd AL0I