Along with input from Mark VK5QI, I helped put together an article for the March 2023 edition of QTC magazine. QTC happens to be RASA (Radio Amateur Society Of Austraila) official magazine.
We start by covering off an introduction to High Altitude Ballooning, then dive into a bit of history about High Altitude Ballooning in Australia, then move onto the work Mark VK5QI has been doing within the High Altitude Ballooning space, then work through a couple of sections on the STEM learning opportunities that a hobby / sport like High Altitude Ballooning presents and finally wrap up the piece talking about the work that EMDRC (Eastern & Mountain District Radio Club) has been doing these last few years on the High Altitude Balloon front.
High Altitude Balloon as a STEM hobby / sport offers multitude of learning opportunities across a number of different disciplines. These include – designing of the payload, programming the Raspberry Pi and other micro-controllers, design and build of custom payload boards with sensors for the flight, modelling & forecasting of the flight path and tweaking of the various parameters to be able to achieve a safe flight, planning & scheduling of the flight, organizing and performing the launch including using mobile computers (based on the Raspberry Pi, RTL SDR, etc.) to track and retrieve the payload.
High Altitude Ballooning offers many different STEM learning opportunities to engage kids of different age groups i.e. from 6 to 86 (and possibly higher). Thanks to the folks at RASA and the editors of QTC magazine for giving us the opportunity to share with the community our love for STEM and our passion for taking STEM learning to the masses through High Altitude Ballooning.
- Read the article at the RASA QTC mag website (March 2023 edition, Page 42) – https://vkradioamateurs.org/qtc-e-magazine/
- Read the article shared via Google Drive (QTC Magazine, 2023 edition, Page 42) – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-WVjTV595TCQS1Ebk83VuKNaSSdvkRdF/view?usp=sharing
- Read all the other editions of the QTC magazine here – https://www.qtcmag.com/
We hope you found this post useful. Please drop us a note with any questions, comments or suggestions you might have. You can reach me at trevor at hack2 dot live.
