Pegasus UK High Altitude Balloon Project

I found this on the Make blog. An amateur high altitude balloon project. I always wanted to do this. http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jac208/pegasus/

I was surprised that this kind of technical adventure was authorized. That's great! But sure enough, the rules (sadly) prevented them from using amateur radio for the balloon to ground link.

Three cheers for the Pegasus crew!

London Shack Photo

Here is my London shack. This is also the UK studio of the world-famous SolderSmoke podcast (our other studio is in Juneau, Alaska).

The Drake 2-B has center stage. Above it is a homebrew 40 meter DSB transmitter, with an outboard MOSFET linear amp (based on a Ramsey kit) in the small box to the left.

On the bench to the left of the 2-BQ is my 17 meter SSB rig (TX and separate RX).

The SolderSmoke mailbag gong is visible on the floor under radios. The Estes Rocketcam is on the table, as is a small homebrew telescope (made from broken binoculars). My Heath HW-8 is also there.

In the window on the right you can see my two Volkswagen solar panels. They are connected to a 7 amp-hour gel cell battery, which powers the HW-8.

On the wall behind the radios is a poster from the UK's "Beagle 2" mission to Mars .