What a Long Strange Trip it's been

The S-9 balloon is still going strong. After travelling across the Black Sea into Turkey the GPS failed, which caused the WSPR and JT-9 modes to stop working properly as they're dependent on accurate time. Some signals were picked up although there are few WSPR receiving stations across all of Asia. Signals are mostly being picked up now by a station in Sweden and a couple of New Zealand hams, usually during grey line conditions. Here are the most recent spots of the primary WSPR signal.

This is from the WSPR reporting site.

Timestamp	Call	MHz	SNR	Drift	Grid	Pwr	Reporter	RGrid	km	az
2016-04-21 11:02	VE3KCL	10.140277	-22	4	ON44	0.02	ZL1RS	RF64vs	11008	132
2016-04-21 10:38	VE3KCL	10.140270	-19	-1	ON45	0.02	ZL1RS	RF64vs	11081	131
2016-04-21 10:26	VE3KCL	10.140277	-26	-4	ON35	0.02	ZL2ABN	RE78kv	11750	134
2016-04-21 10:26	VE3KCL	10.140273	-19	-4	ON35	0.02	ZL1RS	RF64vs	11199	130
2016-04-21 00:14	VE3KCL	10.140265	-26	-4	NO77	0.02	SM0EPX/RX2	JO89si	4255	307
2016-04-20 13:02	VE3KCL	10.140263	-22	-4	MP83	0.02	ZL1RS	RF64vs	13791	102
2016-04-20 13:02	VE3KCL	10.140264	-22	-4	MP83	0.02	ZL1RS2	RF64vt	13787	102
2016-04-20 13:02	VE3KCL	10.140267	-24	-4	MP83	0.02	ZL2ABN	RE78kv	14387	105
2016-04-20 12:38	VE3KCL	10.140257	-21	2	MP83	0.02	ZL1RS	RF64vs	13791	102
2016-04-20 12:38	VE3KCL	10.140259	-21	1	MP83	0.02	ZL1RS2	RF64vt	13787	102
2016-04-20 12:38	VE3KCL	10.140261	-23	2	MP83	0.02	ZL2ABN	RE78kv	14387	105

Query time: 0.007 sec

The GPS recovered after travelling through the Middle East leading to speculation that the GPS failed due to jamming signals in the war zone. Fortunately when it woke up the following morning all was well again although tracking was unavailable through much of the day due to propagation conditions not favouring the 16 milliwatt signal.

The predictions based on winds and the next location the balloon was heard shows it crossing Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. It was then spotted in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, having crossed Uzbekistan whilst out of range of the receiving stations. It then spent a couple of days looping through Russia.

The latest report on the tracking web site shows that the balloon has almost crossed Mongolia and about to enter Northeastern China travelling East Southeast which might take it over North Korea or even back into Russia where it sidles down the coast East of China. The distance traveled is now more than 36,000 km and the altitude is still around 10,000 metres so there is no sign of a problem.

If the current wind speed and direction are maintained it could well be over the North Pacific on its way back to North America. I hope to pick it up on WSPR or JT9 once that happens.