Amateur Radio Ballooning with VE7NFR: Presentation Notes
On February 8, 2025, the Lake Washington Ham Club welcomed Adrian Stimpson VE7NZ and Scott Leaf VA7SL from the North Fraser Amateur Radio Club VE7NFR to present on Amateur Radio Ballooning. Below is a copy of their slideshow, in PDF form, which you can download and view.
To get more information on their balloon projects, and to support them in their exciting endeavors, make sure to check out their website at: VE7NFR Pico-Balloons, and their GoFundMe at: Fundraiser by Scott Leaf : Amateur Radio Ballooning in British Columbia.
Amateur Radio Ballooning with VE7NFR
Amateur radio ballooning requires an understanding of many things: materials science, wind/weather profiling, thermodynamics, weak signal propagation (WSPR), power management and chemistry. This presentation will discuss these as we look closer at two aspects of ballooning - (1) small pico-balloons that can float around 40,000 feet, circumnavigate the Earth and send their location and other data via WSPR; and (2) high-altitude-balloons that can go over 100,000 feet and provide wide area repeater coverage and other capabilities for several hours.
We will discuss what you need to do this, the regulations, the costs, etc. We will also play some live audio and video from our launches in 2024 and talk about our plans for 2025.
About Our Presenters:
Adrian Stimpson, VE7NZ, was first licensed in 1980 at the age of 15 and has been on the air almost daily ever since. He got his first job with an engineering company that wanted to hire someone with “Advanced Amateur Radio credentials.”
His ham radio interests include HF contesting (especially CW), deploying repeaters on unusual bands like 220, 900, and 1295 MHz and, of course, amateur radio ballooning.
He is a co-founder of The Canada Hub (www.thecanadahub.ca) a popular AllStar/IRLP/EchoLink network and a regular contributor the The Dipole (www.thedipole.com) - the most reliable source for Amateur Radio News.
Thanks to Amateur Radio, he has spent close to 40 years in the satellite and telecommunications industries, currently focusing on improving GPS performance by understanding how the ionosphere affects GPS signals.
Like Adrian, Scott Leaf, VA7SL has been playing with radio since the 1970s when he built his first transmitter with a RadioShack 150 in 1 kit, then modified it to wipe out the entire AM Broadcast band in his neighborhood. From there things went downhill : Scott is currently the Repeaterbook.com Admin for British Columbia and the Yukon Territories; he is the Co-founder of the North Fraser Amateur Radio Club and the All Star Canada Hubs. He is the Net Manager and Co-founder of the Trans Canada Net. He is a delegated Canadian Amateur Radio Examiner. Scott is the Editor in Chief of The Dipole.com, a satirical take on Amateur Radio and he is the Web Master of VE7NFR.com. Scott is also a dedicated High Altitude Balloon enthusiast and manipulator of fellow Hams to do things for him that he can't do, doesn't want to do, or can't afford to do by himself.
You can also check out some of their previous launches on YouTube: