Balloon Launch Information Bulletins

[Tom Azlin, N4ZPT]

Thanks Bob,

You just connected to the VWS "powers that be" or at least to me, the 
VWS balloon program coordinator.

Several of us that attended the MD-DC briefing you gave were thinking to 
use APRS messaging to coordinate our launch and recovery teams instead 
of trying HF. We tested this the last launch in that we could see each 
others beacons via digipeaters. I would be happy to put out bulletins on 
our launch and recovery. Our team itself could use the bulletins rather 
than my directing messages to each team.

Do we have to be careful on the selection of bulletin numbers to not 
wipe out some other person's beacon?  Or are they indexed to the sender. 
Guess I will go look it up!

73, tom n4zpt
Vienna Wireless Society Balloon Coordinator


Robert Bruninga wrote:
>> This is the heads up for the Vienna Wireless 
>> Society VWS-6 balloon flight.
>> ... is intending to launch VWS-6, an amateur 
>> radio balloon flight, this Saturday around 
>> 10:00 am EST from Strasburg, VA. 
> 
> Andre, Can we get the following back to the VWS powers that be:
> 
> *** Please put out local APRS bulletins on the status of the
> launch so that mobiles will be alerted to this activity.  It
> doesn't take much to send out a bulletin to be received by all
> the mobiles in real time:
> You can even do it from your D7 or D700:
> 
> 1) Since this is a regional activity, go ahead and violate the
> usual 2 hop path receommendation and use 3 hops.  This should
> cover the 6 state area.
> 
> 2) Send your bulletins using the message address of BLN# where #
> is the number of the one-line bulletin.
> 
> 3) Use sequential BLN# numbers if the information is new.  But
> you can also re-use the same BLN# to overwrite (or in effect
> cancel) a previous bulletin.
> 
> 4) Your bulletin can even contain the text [Balloon in view] and
> any APRS software with voice code will speak it.  The D700 will
> speak some words, but I forget the vocabulary.
> 
> APRS is an information distributino resource.  Plesae use it to
> keep everyone informed about the progress of this launch.  Not
> just tracking the balloon!
> 
> Bob, Wb4APR