I’m a member of a Facebook group called HAB-NL (HAB stands for High Altitude Ballooning). There was a post announcing the launch of a balloon in Den Haag (The Hague), The Netherlands on the last day of the year. It was named “De afsluiter” or “The Last One”.
Callsign was PD7PN, the modes were RTTY and LoRa. Frequency 434.61250 for RTTY and 434.625 for LoRa.
Around 11:30 local time the balloon went up. My first decode by ear was at an altitude of 700 meter, fl-digi was not able to decode it complete (CRC error). Just a few minutes later I had a good copy and could track a big part of the fligth. Distance was 114 km increasing to 160 km. Elevation from my point of view was barely 1 degree.
After 1.5 hours of flying there was no more telemetry. Just a weak signal. This was it.
There were also no more updates on the HABhub tracking page. The last position I could decode was at an altitude of 5415 meters and 161 km from me.
