Dave Akerman

One of the nice things about LoRa vs traditional radio modulation techniques used by high altitude balloons, is that LoRa chips include decoders.  So whereas RTTY and APRS generally require a PC to decode the signal, LoRa only needs a basic microcontroller.  So LoRa receivers are cheap and small. I’ve […]

IRC is “Internet Relay Chat” and is the primary means of sharing information between HAB enthusiasts in Europe and beyond. It is a great place to ask for advice about your flight, to tell people when your flight will be (so they can help track it and give you help […]

This is planned for Saturday morning, when Steve Randall and I are are launching a single balloon, probably around 8am but ISH applies.  If you can’t manage to get up that early don’t worry it could be a fairly long flight at around 3.5 hours. There are 3 trackers planned: […]

This flight is planned for Tuesday 16th July and will commemorate the launch of Apollo 11 on this day in 1969, 50 years ago. I want to make it special, so the flight will have a few new things all designed to try and recapture the technology of the ’60s. […]

Sometime last year I came across a Python library for controlling a GoPro camera, and was interested because this provides a means for a Raspberry Pi to capture photographs from a GoPro during a HAB flight, and then send those images to the ground via SSDV. I happened to have […]

Although the Pi camera is a very good option for live imaging from a Raspberry Pi tracker, it does have its limitations -mainly due to its plastic lens which is a moderate wide angle and not as sharp as some.  There are alternative lenses to try and some are very […]

I’ve flown a few different types of camera on my HAB flights, starting with Canon compact cameras in my early flights, and Raspberry Pi cameras in many of my more recent flights. GoPro and other “action” cameras are popular, and I’ve flown them a few times, though their rather extreme […]

As balloonists we have a number of general-purpose tools to track a flight, of which the main ones are the live map and live imagery page. Sometimes though it’s nice to have a custom dashboard showing these items, the telemetry and anything else of interest. A small number of flights […]

I’m hoping to send a flight across the Irish Sea to land in Northern Ireland. Launch time approx 10am this coming Thursday. The wind conditions are unusual with the lower winds southerly and the upper winds easterly.  I will be aiming the balloon over towards Northern Ireland where Philip Heron […]