[aprssig] NE Illinois Balloon Tracks

[Lynn W. Deffenbaugh (Mr)]

Three balloons (or at least, three APRS trackers) were flying over NE 
Illinois today.  Their APRS infrastructure usage can be viewed at:

http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net.nyud.net/Tracking/Balloons/WB9SKY-11*

http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net.nyud.net/Tracking/Balloons/KC9POK-11*

http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net.nyud.net/Tracking/Balloons/KC9LIG-11*

(Make sure you look for today's date, these trackers also flew on before)

WB9SKY-11 was heard as far west as Sioux Falls, NW of Duluth, North of 
Milwaukee, NE to Flint and Detroit, East to Columbus, and SE to Cincinnati.

KC9POK-11 was almost as bad and worse to the south sending at least on 
packet well south of Lexington.

KC9LIG-11 was the most contained (if you can call it that) without the 
extremes to the north and south.  I'm sure that was just the luck of the 
draw.

Note that these balloons were using very APRS-abusive paths causing wide 
ranging infrastructure activation and 144.390Mhz channel hogging.  
Please, balloonists, consult with some local APRS Amateur Radio mentors 
before launching transmitters at such altitudes!

If you're going to fly transmitters at balloon altitudes, please 
restrict your trackers to no path, or at most a WIDE2-1.  You've got 
line of sight to everything on the ground, so you really don't need any 
digis (certainly not WIDE1 digis) to help deliver your signal.

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ - On behalf of the APRS community

PS.  The larger the final dash number, the higher the resolution.  
You'll need to zoom in to see the details.  The files ending in 
-D-nn.png are close-ups of the tracked points themselves and do not show 
the infrastructure usage.  Red lines are direct communications, green 
lines are Digi to IGate links.  Small red dots are Digis, larger red 
dots are IGates.

Feel free to use the images however you would like, but copy them and 
republish them.  Please do not publish direct links to my server.