From ARVic, original post here.

A story on the exploits by Andy VK3YT with his pico party type foil balloons has just been reported by HACKADAY magazine.

The article ‘Pico Space Balloon Circumnavigates the Globe, Twice’, written by Elliot Williams, talks about the smaller and lighter balloons with very low power ham radio payloads.

It looks the Andy VK3YT pico balloons fitted with GPS, radio, solar cell, and batteries, that stay afloat for weeks. The article shows the path taken by PS-46 in July from Australia, and around the Southern Hemisphere more than twice.

The report gives details of the two different encoding schemes WSPR and JT9, used to help trackers using the 20m and 30m bands. The pico balloon transmits on 20 mW power a few times an hour, allowing movement to be followed as receivers tease the low, slow signal out from the noise.

HACKADAY describes going twice around the world as ‘incredible’. But the author notes that Andy’s first called PS-2, only stayed up for 15 hours and made it under 800km away. As with many human endeavours – practice makes perfect.

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