Hello,

This is an amateur balloon launch announcement that may interest North
European amateur radio operators. The Finnish balloon project Ilmari
will (finally) launch a balloon on August 11th, 2007, at approximately
06 UTC from Padasjoki (latitude N61° 21', longitude E025° 03',
Maidenhead square KP21MI). That is today, within 5 hours or so of this
posting, sorry for the late announcement. The flight is expected to last
from 3 to 6 hours and touch down around 30 nm north-east from the launch
site.

Ilmari is more than just a typical balloon, for example it carries a
23cm ATV transmitter and a 2m up/70cm down linear transponder
(cw/ssb/digital), in addition to more typical 80m CW beacon and 70cm
APRS transmitter. If Ilmari reaches its projected height of 25
kilometers, it should be workable from most parts of Finland, Sweden,
Estonia, Latvia and north-west Russia. It maybe possible to receive
Ilmari in northern parts of Lithuania and eastern parts of Norway. The
balloon will use callsigns OH2SIX-11 and/or OH2SIX-12, they should be
visible in the APRS-IS during the flight.

For more information and instructions on how and where (frequencies) to
work Ilmari, have a look at
http://www.kolumbus.fi/michael.fletcher/ilmari.htm and
http://wiki.ham.fi/Ilmari-2007 for a kind of launch log.

Tapio

Tapio Sokura schreef:
Hello,

This is an amateur balloon launch announcement that may interest North
European amateur radio operators. The Finnish balloon project Ilmari
will (finally) launch a balloon on August 11th, 2007, at approximately
06 UTC from Padasjoki (latitude N61° 21', longitude E025° 03',
Maidenhead square KP21MI).

How did it go?

Roland

Roland wrote:
Tapio Sokura schreef:
This is an amateur balloon launch announcement that may interest North
European amateur radio operators. The Finnish balloon project Ilmari
will (finally) launch a balloon on August 11th, 2007, at approximately

How did it go?

It went quite nicely, upto about 31 km in height and even the payload
was retrieved successfully 8 minutes after touchdown. The biggest
problem were people who used way too much power to access the
transponder, you could've worked it with less than one watt and 1/4 2m
vertical just fine. There's some pictures and text available about this
flight in English at http://wiki.ham.fi/Ilmari-2007a and
http://ham.zmailer.org/oh2mqk/ilmari/2007a/

Tapio

After a successful maiden flight two weeks ago, there will be another
Ilmari balloon flight next weekend. The flight is scheduled for 06 UTC
on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007, from Sappee (KP21GJ).

Ilmari should be workable from many parts of north-eastern Europe, if it
goes as high up as the previous flight (30 km). Remember to keep your
ERP low, 1 watt is plenty for working Ilmari's 2m/70cm ssb/cw
transponder! APRS(-IS) callsigns will probably be OH2SIX-11 and/or -12.

Have a look at http://wiki.ham.fi/Ilmari-2007b for operating
instructions and http://www.kolumbus.fi/michael.fletcher/ilmari.htm for
pictures and information from the maiden flight.

Tapio