HAB or High Altitude Ballooning has been an interest of mine for just a couple of months. I first became aware of it when I saw Dave Akerman on a children’s programming programme on the BBC. HAB is the practice of sending small balloons, like weather balloons, up into the high atmosphere, almost into space. In fact, it’s termed ‘Near Space’. These balloons have a variety of payloads which can contain anything from a basic GPS for positioning to a full rig for high altitude separation.

The main reason I became interested in the movement is it’s involvement with radio. I have been a licensed radio amateur, or ‘Ham’, for 20 years. My callsign is G0TDJ. Radio transmitters are used in HAB to broadcast telemetry and other things like images on the license exempt part of the ISM radio band, here in the UK (part of ITU region 1) it is from 433.050MHz to 434.790MHz although frequencies between 434.075MHz to 434.650MHz are favored in my experience of HAB.

I have recently acquired two examples of trackers, the devices used to send telemetry and my next post will be about them.