Sadly no contact made, but I now have a couple of Yagi Antennas to use going forward.
On Saturday, 20 September 2025, at approximately 11 am BST, the RSGB will be launching a high-altitude balloon carrying a relay.
The flight will last around two hours, and the balloon will reach a height of 90,000 feet, approximately 27.5 km.
The challenge is to build your tracker and try to contact the relay, which will pass call details to the ground.
The recommended approach is to use the LoRa Wireless Tracker ESP32-S3FN8+SX1262+UC6580 development board.
All that’s left is to get the highest gain Yagi you can and see if you can make contact.
I have the board, so I just need to build the image and test. At least I have a few weeks to prepare.