Habex is a High Altitude Balloon carrying APRS equipment as well as a parrot repeater on 437.900MHz. I had lots of fun on Saturday 14 June 2014 making contacts via the parrot repeater and tracing the balloon via APRS.

I ended up making around 40 contacts ranging from Richards bay to Kuruman, Kimberley and Durban. It was really great fun!

The equipment I used was my trusty Yaesu FT-847 running 10-20w into a 5/8 antenna for 70cm. The initial launch of the balloon was from Klerksdorp, about 120km away. I had to wait till the balloon was about 3000m high before I could start to make contacts. The rest of the morning was spent having fun making contacts further and further away including contacts into Richards bay, Durban, Kimberley and Kuruman.

Below you can see the FT-847 receiving a S7 signal from the parrot repeater. At one stage the signals got up to S9+40db!

Yaesu FT-847 operating the 70cm parrot repeater.

Here you can see a screenshot while tracking the balloon via APRS, take note of how high the balloon is! (31756m)

Eventually the payload was split with the repeater cruising at around 28km for a while before slowly descending. Another balloon with just APRS equipment continued to climb and head west towards Swaziland trying to set a new altitude record.

I am hoping there will be another Habex launch soon, it sure was fun! Thanks to all those who worked hard to make this happen.

(c)2014 R Venter