NCC High Altitude Balloon Team Members Earn HAM Licensing, Launch Balloon

Two students from the Nash Community College High Altitude Balloon Team have successfully completed the requirements for their HAM Technician Licensing Exam. Grayson Morris and Jonathan Webb, Associate in Engineering students, both now have their own HAM call sign and are licensed with the Federal Communications Commission to operate on certain restricted radio frequencies. This is extremely important to the team because the GPS units used to track balloon payloads require a license to operate. On Friday, March 11, the NCC High Altitude Balloon Team participated in an educational outreach effort with the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math classes at Nashville Elementary School. The group performed a test launch from the elementary school campus. The payload landed in the Pasquotank River, just north of Elizabeth City. At the end of March, the High Altitude Balloon team will compete in the NC Space Grant Community College High-Altitude Balloon Challenge and Competition in Hickory, NC. During the event, NCC students will have their entry payload inspected, attend a banquet with the other high altitude balloon teams, and present their project at the conference before launching the payload on Saturday, March 26, 2022 from 8am-8:45am. The payload can be tracked at aprs.fi using the call sign KO4PXZ. The launch and recovery are the final steps of a six-month-long, open-ended Engineering project.