Below are photos of the preparation for the launch and general photos from the weekend. Read to the right of the photos for information.
Click the thumbnail for a larger photo.
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Firstly, probably the hardest and most diligent "employee" of the day was OM Frank Mercier (ZS6MER). For those not in the know, Frank was the poor chap that took all those call-ins (52 in total) on HF and tried to keep you informed. Frank was a valuable late addition to the team and his help very much appreciated. We certainly hope he wants to attend the next one. |
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Mission control. Top right photo is Frank using the Hamnet mobile station. |
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Joining the HABEX team on this day were two of the schools that will be participating in the main launch where they will build their own payloads. To the left are just some of them. On Friday night, they descended on Mission control to see what was what. Frank chatted for nearly two hours with the learners demonstrating HAM radio and making actual contacts for them to listen to. Next time we must get the necessary permissions to allow them to talk. Bottom photo on the right is Chris (ZS6COG) showing them APRS. He also went into great detail showing the packets and messages inside of the packet. |
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Here the guys are putting the final assembly together. Bottom left was the GSM APRS where an "oopsie" caused it to become inoperative and removed from the payload the next day. Bottom right is Andre (ZR6CQ) and Rijnhardt (ZU6RDP) watching the communication between the controller and Andre's data logging and presentation software. |
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Lastly some photos of the camp area. The Klerksdorp HAM community have been very kind to the HABEX team and provided us with whatever we needed. |
All of the pages for the Launch, Retrieval and General can be found here : - |
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