Broadcast - 5 Mar 2023
If it is Sunday when you hear this broadcast then with a bit of luck there will be an NTARC crew at Wattlewood Park Sassafras. We should be packing up our portable repeaters, collecting the club’s communications trailer and leisurely making our way back to Launceston after what hopefully will have been a successful equine endurance ride on Saturday. Once again the club provided Safety Communications for the 80, 40 and 20 Km events for the day starting at 06:30. An update to follow at a later date.
You most likely have heard mention of ChatGPT, but probably not its full name, Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, it’s touted as being a fairly advanced chatbot, developed by OpenAI and launched late last year. A chatbot is a software application used to conduct an online chat conversation via text. Well, Stuart VK7ES a few weeks ago decided to see how it would go writing some computer code for his Arduino, referred to as a Sketch. He provided the query to ChatGP in the form of a text description of his requirement including equipment and the functionality he wished it to provide. This included sensors, control equipment, indicators and the conditionals including timing that they were to operate under. It indeed reciprocated by replying with a full sketch ready to run, once loaded into an Arduino. Last morning tea, Stuart brought along a fully bread boarded prototype based on ChatGPTs allocation of Arduino Nano pins to be used, and loaded with the generated code. Although the overall requirement was not met, the individual functions required worked, which in itself is amazing! The code is being looked into to see how close it came to what is needed. Or do we indeed need to “tweak” the request instead? We also tried writing a text descriptor for ChatGPT to generate python code for a Raspberry Pi timer. The resultant code structurally looked correct and will be trialled when we have time. Considering ChatGPT draws its information from the “Ever Accurate” internet, it really did do an incredible job.
If you managed to catch the WIA part of last week’s broadcast, and decided to follow up the segment on the
Amateur Radio balloon launch that was scheduled to occur just after the talk back, then you would not have been disappointed. I found the club site with launch site location information, but luckily Peter VK7KPC found the link to the actual launch site for the day and posted it on Discord. There were live pictures from the payload camera updated every minute from Horus the balloon. These pictures started from launch preparations and balloon inflation, all the way through the flight that reached an altitude of 32,000 metres and back again to terra firma. At that height there is obvious a definite horizon curvature, and the sky portion of these pictures above the blue horizon is jet black. At this peak altitude the balloon’s “automatic burst timer” triggers and deflates the balloon, the parachute is deployed and the long descent starts. The final pictures were of sideways grass and the recovery team walking down the side of the picture, as the payload had landed on its side. The telemetry provided real time assent or descent velocity, horizontal velocity, altitude, direction and temperature. All this was incorporated into an APRS like tracking map provided by “amateur.sondehub.org”
Some technical information from the South Australia Amateur Radio Experimenters Group (AREG), High-Altitude Ballooning sub-group, Project Horus web site. Yes that’s quite a mouthful. On to the RF side of things the FM-SSTV transmitter was on 145.100 MHz, a Wenet Imagery transmitter was on 443.500 MHz. Horus Binary telemetry was on 434.200 MHz and the Radiation Sensor Payload was on 434.210 MHz.
The payload was transmitting images using the PD120 SSTV mode throughout the flight, and could be decoded using any SSTV software capable of decoding this mode. This is the same mode that is commonly used on broadcasts from the International Space Station.
This ballooning event didn’t interrupt the Northern 1296 QSO party hosted by Peter VK7PD but some of us certainly were keeping an eye on the computer monitor throughout the duration of the flight.
Web links to this event can be found in the text version of the broadcast.
https://www.areg.org.au/archives/211405 and for flight images http://ssdv.habhub.org/
On a much more mundane and dare I say “ a down to earth note”, the NTARC newly elected club committee had its first meeting for the year as required by the Constitution, to set the ball rolling so to speak.
Mug Order - yes, we are talking about the white mugs for drinking out of, those that have our club logo on one side, personalised with your name and call sign on the other. We are placing another order so if you would like one then please see André at the Friday coffee mornings or at the Wednesday bi-weekly club Technical Nights. Those members who have already requested a mug, please email secretary@ntarc.net to confirm order, and anyone else who wants one please specify what name is to be printed above the call sign. The final price will be about $12 depending on eventual quantity ordered.
UPCOMING EVENTS
The Club Technical night - The next session will be on Wednesday 8th of March and will commence at the usual time of 7.30 pm, running through to about 10.30 pm, at the Club room Archer Street, Rocherlea. Pop in catch up with fellow amateurs, bring along something that you are currently building or just ask questions? You might also be able to answer some from other attendees. That is what the evenings are all about, anything of a technical or near-technical nature, however defined, is fair game.
Coffee Morning - held every Friday in the NTARC Club rooms. Time is from 10am to noon and we look forward to seeing you all there. We currently have a couple of QSL cards awaiting collection, so why not pop in and check the cards and join us for a cuppa. Endless tea and coffee along with biscuits is available for a small gold coin donation.
The TestNet and TechNet session - Wednesday the 15th of March. TestNet/CW course on 3.580MHz from 7pm till 7.30pm…. and a TechNet on 3.567MHz from 7.30pm till about 8.30pm. Your host for the evening will be Nic VK7WW.
FINALLY - A reminder to all members that if you have any items of news you would like added to our weekly roundup, no matter how trivial, then please email them to the Secretary at the following address news@ntarc.net all items to be received no later than 5pm on the Friday prior to the Broadcast.
That’s all folks,
73 from Stefan, VK7ZSB, Secretary NTARC.
