On Saturday, I decided that the missus and I needed to do two things: get out of the house and get some exercise, and test my OpenTracker. So, I thought that we’d drive out to Mount Diablo, get a hike around, and then see how well the combination of my TH-D7A and the OpenTracker worked. For added difficulty, I set the TH-D7A to use the “EL” power setting, which is a very minimal 50mw, fed to the mag mount whip on the top of my Expedition.

Here’s the path it recorded:

OpenTracker, Kenwood TH-D7a at 50mw

It worked pretty well, which bodes well for the balloon launch. It suggests that power levels of a couple hundred mw would be entirely adequate for balloon launches.