That's an interesting collection of countries. Why I wonder the UK and not other Western countries?
Edit: I uploaded video from the flight here: https://youtu.be/4jCU6kVOmc4
Since you mention muons and their detection, I would expect some university (I used to be a physicist)
I helped with some of the comms software, but they did most of the other software themselves too. As for the balloon, again, they did that themselves - they rented the helium cylinder, researched the regulations, how to get a NOTAM issued, arranged the use of a disused airfied as a launch site, phoned air traffic control to get final permission to launch, etc. Beforehand, they did all the testing they could manage without being airborne, and got the hang of driving the sdr dongles they used to receive the two RTTY streams. They also discovered GPRS transmissions really interfered with the Muon amplifier, but that wasn't a big issue if it was only turned on for landing.
On the day, the main thing the two parents did was drive the two chase cars, as the kids hadn't got a driving license. Most things went right first time. They had two redundant GPS receivers and two RTTY transmitters, running completely separate software, one on a raspberry pi zero, and one on a teensy. The GPS chipsets need configuring into high altitude mode, or they stop working above 10,000 meters. But this is impossible to test in advance. The RTTY transmitter that was relaying the Muon results gave a much higher bit error rate than the second one, but the second one's GPS chipset turned out to not be in high altitude mode. The balloon sprang a leak at 16,000 m, and descended gently afterwards. We had been aiming for the expected landing site, and as it dropped back into the jetstream, it started to get away from us, despite us driving as fast as we dared with a large antenna on the car roof. Fortunately two other HAB guys were receiving too, and relaying position information back as we started to hit the limits of what we could receive from the working GPS. As the balloon descended the second GPS came back to life, and we were able to track again until it dropped too low. In the end we got to within a kilometer of where it landed, but the reason we recovered it quickly in the end was because the lovely lady whose pigsty it landed in phoned the number on the payload.
My children went to a high school in France which is ranked in the national top 3 (the ranking fluctuates between these schools depending on the year and the detailed calculation).
There have never even been a project that was in any way close to the one your children did. Was that a "normal" project, ore one you work on by choice over a few years? Or one you do as part of a club (but holy shit - what club that must be!)
For one our education is way, way too theoretical (and basically useless once you learn ans pass the test) and then when I look at the "projects" they did, they look like kindergarten 2nd year marvels.
Hats off to your children!
EDIT: you should publish this in some competition for children
It wasn't the only project he did at school. When he was 14 or 15, they competed to build a solar still for water desalination - his included a solar panel driving a small pump to recirculate water to increase evaporation, an ultrasonic humidifier and a peltier cooler to improve condensation. It actually worked pretty well, but they didn't win. I think the judges thought they had too much parental involvement, but they didn't really.
Then when he was 16, with a different group, they entered a BP-sponsored competition with the brief "imagine the petrol station of the future". They didn't like the brief, and built a "self driving car" (basically a robot car that could follow a wall, based on a Bigtrak toy), and designed, built and tested an inductive charging system for it that could detect the car driving over coils embedded in the road, and turn on the coils in sequence as the robot drove past. I advised them on the robot software, but they did the rest. The analog electronics of coupled coils turned out to be hard, but they got it tuned in the end. It couldn't quite supply enough power to keep the car driving indefinitely, but did extend the range somewhat. That took them a bit more time, but they did win the national competition with that and got to present the project to the CEO of BP. A few weeks later BP announced a project on wireless charging for vehicles - maybe coincidence, but who knows?
It's easy to underestimate what young people are capable of, given all the information available online today.
But apparently tv detector van evidence was used for search warrants that then lead to further evidence that was used in prosecution.
Yes. The primary purpose of the tv detector vans was fearmongering.
But they did exist (in small numbers), and they were at least semi-functional.
Actually no.
You CAN listen to it. Anyone is free to buy a scanner.
You CANNOT record it or redistribute it.
"Technically possible" doesn't always mean "legally permissible."
In the UK if a radio device is 'inherently incapable of transmission', you do not need a licence to install or use it. A scanner is very much that.
It is legal to use a scanner in the UK as long as it is clear from the context that the message being listened to was intended for general reception. There are many circumstances in aviation where this could be the case.
See https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/interference-enforcement/r...
Not quite so black and white.
One easy example I can think of in the UK is uncontrolled/semi-controlled airspace (class E/G) and uncontrolled airfields. Parties transmitting on those frequencies are basically sending broadcast messages for the benefit of anyone listening in order to inform those unknown parties of their location and intentions.
See also, for example, this reply to an FOI request[1], I quote:
Whether or not an aeronautical transmission was intended for general reception would depend on all of the circumstances of the transmission. We cannot therefore say, generally, whether or not listening to these transmissions would be an offence.
[1] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/air_band_listening_an...
That's basically how the actual law on this matter is worded, i.e. "don't listen, but if you did listen, don't tell anyone".
Section 48, Wireless Telegraphy Act[1], notice the clever little "or" at the end of (1)(a).
So 48(1) is telling you: "don't use it with intent"(1)(a), but if you do don't be that person who "discloses information"(1)(b).
Transmitting to ATC is of course quite a different thing.
Oi, you got a loicense for that television receiver, mate?
You need a license to receive a television programme service, which I believe is defined as a service being transmitted by an ofcom registered television station.
It's worth pointing out that it's almost impossible to get Ofcom to prosecute you for anything to do with receiving and recording radio traffic, or even transmitting illegally, as long as you're not making a nuisance of yourself.
This is generally how laws work in the UK. You can do it right up to the point at which it pisses people off enough that the legal system has to act.
Not only is it legal but many police forces around the country use this site to keep an eye on the traffic. At least they did more than a decade ago.
I'm also not sure if this is a system that's legally protected or that the government simply hasn't bothered trying to take these sites down.
P2000 is one way and based on FLEX, a paging protocol. It's indeed only used for fire and ambulance. The police data is too sensitive so they use C2000. Though you will see police traffic related to accidents etc.
But no P2000 isn't protected and the government even used that website themselves :) Not officially though, I guess.
I think this is also because most fire departments use a lot of volunteers which makes their activities a lot more public.
They're used for alerting rather than paging, in that the message is four flashing LEDs and a lot of beeping rather than a description of the incident, and as such the paging transmitters just transmit a unique number rather than a message. The message is always "get to the fire station right now".
Honestly, the concept of this being illegal is shocking to me. I had assumed recording/playback of ATC comms was essentially a universal standard practice (minus Military, police ops, etc.) to help with education and training. It seems like a terrible shame that the UK would have such a strange rule barring it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@VASAviation
Yes
> are we talking some 5 pound fine, or is that something closer to an arrestable offense?
In the UK criminal offences are generally dealt with reasonably softly, i.e. within the context of the criminal and the severity of the crime.
With something like this, which would be a criminal offence similar to re-distributing paid TV services you would normally just go through various levels of fine depending on severity/scale.
So a website explicitly setup to distribute recordings could expect quite a heavy fine because (a) they were knowingly doing it, and (b) they were distributing to a large global audience.
Chances of being arrested on this sort of offence in the UK is highly unlikely. Maybe if you were a repeat offender you might leave them with little choice, but that's probably the only scenario.
(After many years of public broadcasting being charged if you have a TV -- or even a PC or mobile phone with TV capability -- the charges now go through the normal tax system, so you no longer have to worry about the real TV inspection people asking to come in to see if you have a TV!).
Superheterodyne receivers including the ones in TVs have a local oscillator that's mixed with the received signal. This oscillator leaks out a bit and can be detected at short ranges.
These days there's much more interference and TV is not distributed over the air anymore usually. So it is no longer a thing.
The thing is though, it's usually not needed. All they have to do is go to the houses without a license and either look through the window or listen for the sounds of a TV show.
I wish they'd just abandon the concept of a TV License though. Everyone has a media capable device these days and the administrative load of all this license crap is not worth the savings for the 5 people that really don't have a TV. In other words, just take it out of the taxes.
In the Netherlands they have done this for decades but when I lived in Ireland there was still a really expensive license. For which you get 2 really mediocre channels (IMHO)
The funny thing was the ads on TV. They focused not so much on the huge fine of more than a thousand euros but on the shame of being seen in court without a license. As if anyone gives a F... Lol. Piracy was really rampant when I was there and people even networked their wifis together over long distances to share movies.
You could just about make a speculative case for IF and flyback transmission in the old analogue days, although triangulation would have been a serious problem.
Today's digital systems are much quieter.
But the best argument is that even if they worked it wouldn't make a difference. A large team of inspectors has a list of properties without a license and they're checked in person. A complex detector van does nothing to make this easier - as proven by the complete lack of detector evidence in court cases.
“ Modern efforts to detect licence evasion are shrouded in mystery. Modern flatscreen displays receiving digital television signals do not emit as much radio frequency interference as older designs, and any such signals detected are less easily correlated with broadcast television. An LCD television in the home can just as easily be displaying output from a video game console or an online streaming service, with both being usage cases that do not require the owner to pay a licence fee. Based on an alleged BBC submission for a search warrant in recent years, there may be optical methods used in which reflected light from a television in a viewer’s home is compared to a live broadcast signal. The BBC declined to answer the Freedom of Information request with any details of their methods, other than to say they have employed vehicles and handheld devices in enforcement efforts.”
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/tv-detector-vans-once-prowle...
The inspectors can't do much if you refuse to identify or incriminate yourself.
They almost certainly did not work as intended, particularly if you had more than one TV in a 100-metre radius of the van.
Yeah, italy - putting the license fee in the electricity bills.
The Rundfunkbeitrag is applied per household, not based on devices, and it's up to each person to either pay the tax or justify to the Beitragsservice that they don't need to.
Yeah, it's a pretty shitty system and I wish we would get rid of it. Don't have high hopes of that happening anytime soon though.
Their existence was not[0]. Maybe they didn't work. It sounds like they may have been a paper tiger.
Yemen and NK ban amateur radio outright, with very few exceptions for things like DXpeditions or royalty.
No other countries specifically call out a prohibition of airborne amateur radio operation; either they explicitly allow it or they don't specify.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23803850
[PDF] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0026/82637/a...
Meanwhile Ofcom's unofficial position is that they literally cannot be paid to investigate things that happen on the amateur bands, and don't much care what you do anywhere else as long as you're not making a nuisance of yourself.
Informally i’ve had nothing but condescending dismissal on airborne operation because i mentioned some experiments involving a drone (my other hobby).
They might shoot it down but I'd personally consider that a badge of honor. Pissing off the worst dictatorship in the world and getting them to waste at least 50k$ on a jet sortie for a few hundred bucks worth of hobby balloon sounds like money well spent.
I'm not into ballooning but I'm surprised they actually obey this. The UK is another matter of course.
There are 3 levels, Foundation through to Full which come with different privileges. You can achieve a lot with the basic Foundation.
In terms of airborne transmitting - yes the UK is an outlier. It is forbidden to make amateur radio transmissions in the air over the UK, or use a UK licence to do so anywhere I think. The key word here is amateur - so specifically on those bands and with that licence. I think the ISM bands would be fine - and there are balloon projects and clubs in the UK.
I have a Finnish amateur licence in parallel and that doesn't have this restriction but naturally it would still not be allowed to use it to transmit from an aircraft over the UK. And even if it were to be elsewhere there are still some rules surrounding that, and it's hopefully obvious that you need permission of whoever's in charge of the aircraft.
I don't think that's intentionally introduced. My understanding was that mains hum in any grid is an artifact of a noisy signal that just happens to be useful as a forensics fingerprint.
https://www.kccscientific.com/the-dirty-little-secret-about-...
Pretty much the missing word here is ... UNLICENSED.
probably because the gov't hates competition.