Author Topic: High Altitude Military Balloon Radio Comms  (Read 17981 times)

Offline av8tor172

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High Altitude Military Balloon Radio Comms
« on: August 20, 2014, 03:20:59 PM »
Today 1 of my search scanners snagged some interesting comms in the MilAir UHF Air Band.

On 238.375 FM (yes FM) had good comms and hearing callsigns Sky Sat Launch, Apache Base and Combat Sky Sat.  After doing some research I found out that Sky Sat is an FM Military UHF Repeater that's sent up on a High Altitude Balloon to provide communications on UHF over long distances.

It appears what I heard was a demo of this system. I don't know where it was launched from.  Sig. strength was strongest to the South of me (Daytona Beach) so I assume KSC, Canaveral AFS, or Patrick AFB.  I'm uploading some of the comms I copied from the balloon/repeater.

I also was receiving a data signal, assumed to be telemetry from the balloon's payload.  I have a video of that signal on my website as well as pictures of a Sky Sat system. You can see more here: http://milaircomms.com/skysat.html

Just don't snag stuff like this everyday, it was a bit different....

George
www.MilAirComms.com



Offline RonR

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Re:
« Reply #1 on: August 20, 2014, 05:28:44 PM »
Great catch George! Thanks for sharing!

Offline av8tor172

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Re:
« Reply #2 on: August 21, 2014, 07:29:36 AM »
Great catch George! Thanks for sharing!

Not much I miss when running 8 scanners in search mode!  Here's pics of the latest arrangement of the Mil VHF/UHF command center:
http://www.milaircomms.com/shack.html

In the top 2 pictures you'll see a row containing 8 Uniden BC-780XLT's.  7 of them each search about 20 MHz of the 225 - 400 MHz range.  1 of them searches the 138 - 144 MHz and 148 - 151 MHz (AM)  So I can sweep both the VHF and UHF military bands every 8 seconds. 

With this, there almost is no need to "program" banks of frequencies, but the top 3 scanners (all BCT15x) are scanning banks plus anything found in search is then programmed into 1 of the BCT15x.  The other scanner on the top row is a junk BC785D (worse scanner I've ever owned), all it does is scan KDAB (Daytona Beach Int. Airport) VHF & UHF freqs....

George
www.MilAirComms.com

Offline hayek

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Re: High Altitude Military Balloon Radio Comms
« Reply #3 on: August 22, 2014, 01:13:13 PM »
Sounds like communications with the 7th Special Forces Group (7SFG), based at Eglin, near Pensacola.
http://www.eglin.af.mil/units/7specialforcesgroup/

Offline svoynick

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Re: High Altitude Military Balloon Radio Comms
« Reply #4 on: September 15, 2014, 04:51:39 AM »
Cool stuff!

I love the antenna setup on the balloon - looks like copper foil on a clear plastic substrate or something.  All kinds of stuff going on there.

Too bad you didn't expand out the 10 kHz data signal on your waterfall display - I wonder if you'd have been able to see some FDM structure within it, to get a sense of what kind of modulation they might have been using.  

Very nice catch...

Cool shack, too.  In the night picture with the clock and world map on the wall behind the desk, that looks like you have a giant video display back there, like in a situation room or something.   8-)

I especially like the Heathkit gear (I miss my old DX-60B!) and the 440 MHz log periodic, right there so you can do Satcomm from poolside!