We had an excellent gathering of exceptional Amateur Radio Operators talking about various projects from Martin's thoughts on elevation control, to current assembly and testing of AVR based PCB's and experiments with new solar panel configurations.

General Agenda

• New Tracker/Kazu
• Solar Array/David, Beau, Rikke
• Manufacturing Trackers/Beau
• Controllable Altitude Balloon/Martin, David
• Lightweight Crossband Repeater/Martin
• Chabot Space and Science Center/Martin
• Calaveras County Public Schools/David
• Drone Rules Explained/Robert

Continuing on from our first experimental floater launch last year, the focus shifts to 2023 and the development of a totally new design! This was posted earlier at https://sf-hab.org/2022/10/29/new-trackers-underway/

Kazu AG6NS and W6MRR have been working on a couple of trackers. One is a dual band 2/20 m APRS/WSPR with other modes coming. It is based on an ATMega1284 processor, which is a 328 (used currently) with more memory and and running at 10 MHz, the safe limit for 3.3 V operation. Kazu has come up with code for it and a revised PCB is being worked on. The other is a Raspberry Pi Pico based tracker. This is a longer range project. It will use the same Si5351 based modulator and filters for 2/20 m. The Picos are attractive as they have a dual core ARM Cortex-M0+ @133MHz which is far more powerful than the ATMegas. The RP2040 chip has instructions for DIYing a board. However, the Raspberry Pi Pico as is, was the easiest path to start working on a design. Due to the chip shortage, it may end up using through hole components for the output filters.

We are looking at a lot of fun things that can be done – SSTV data and cam, voice ID over VHF, crossband repeaters, and latex floaters.

The ongoing work and interest continues with Kazu's coding and PCB development to use a RP2040.

While this is the start of a new hackaday.io project, you might have caught wind of some of our balloons at the last Supercon