BS2 and Radiosonde

John.Gray

· I have been asked to look at a project from my neighbor to modify a weather ballon radiosonde and see if it is possible to recieve as well as transmit data using surplus radiosondes.
· has anyone tried to modify one of these before?

steve_b

I work for the weather service up in Canada, here, and have a few old sonde's that didn't pass their preflight checks (basically, one of the sensors was out of range at the time, or the battery didn't energize with the added water.

Anyhow, I never did get around to using them....I did post about it a long time ago (possibly pre-forum days -- in yahoo groups)....
Something to note....the band that they transmit on is a licensed band.· You have to be careful you are not interfering with 'real' flights.· Typically if you are within 20km's of an airport, you could interfere with them.

So far as I can remember, I believe there are only 2flights a day through Canada (and probably the US)....I think they're at 0000z and 1200z.
You might be able to use this site ( http://raob.fsl.noaa.gov/·) to determine if there's a weather station near you sending sondes.

Google is your friend:
http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~hopkins/wx-inst/wxi-raob.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosonde
http://www.geo.mtu.edu/department/classes/ge406/cmriley/


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Steve

"Inside each and every one of us is our one, true authentic swing. Something we was born with. Something that's ours and ours alone. Something that can't be learned... something that's got to be remembered."

John.Gray

· The radiosonde that I have are a RS-80.· The problem as presented to me is the RS-80 only transmit, I also need for it to recieve data as well.· I have a exempt from the FCC to operate in the 1680 mhz area for these experiments.· The real question is buliding the sonde to RX/TX using the surplus equipment

steve_b

Well, what part of the sonde do you want to reuse?
The transmitter on those are fairly simple....but constructing a receiver in the same band might be more work than you want.
If you just want to reuse the sensors, then do that and get a tx/rx system off the shelf!

If you're looking to "fly" the sondes, you'll not want to make it heavier than it already is, for obvious reasons.

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Steve

"Inside each and every one of us is our one, true authentic swing. Something we was born with. Something that's ours and ours alone. Something that can't be learned... something that's got to be remembered."