SA6BSS Balloon (Updated)

View from a high altitude balloon (not SA6BSS)

This morning, I was quite excited to see SA6BSS, a high altitude balloon equipped with a 10mW WSPR transmitter, come into grid square IO74 (I am in IO73).  The typical distance to the balloon at this time was about 100km.  The balloon had tracked across the Atlantic from Greenland over the previous day or so.

Mikael Dagman, the launcher, explains of the arrangement:

"The tracker is using a vertical antenna 5m10cm x2 [20m vertical dipole] , gnd leg tied to the balloon and tx leg hanging down from pcb that itself hangs in the middle using 0,15mm2 wire, balloontype is a cheap Aliexpress one."

General balloon position changes 12 hrs prior to 10UT 12/04/2020.

The actual balloon, under preparation before flight.  Image(C) and courtesy of Mikael Dagman.

Transmitter and solar array payload.  Image (C) and courtesy of Mikael Dagman.

Here are the relative positions of the receivers in the UK (stangely, there were not many):

Balloon somewhat later, now in IO85.

And here are how these stations (except G7SBW, who only heard one spot), received the balloon around this time:

Unfortunately, the 'IO85' receiver has no public information about his station, which is very irritating.