I found a post recently on the Amsat mailing list that caught my attention. Skyler, a Colorado high school student had put together an amateur radio club at his school and is now looking to put together his own high altitude weather balloon launch. They are looking for donations to a gofundme campaign to put together the necessary supplies for a launch. Here’s some details from Skyler:

Hi, its Skyler Fennell KD0WHB, I am a Senior in High School, and started the Colorado Amateur Satellite net (amsatnet.info). This year, I have started an Amateur Radio club at my School (Denver School of the Arts Amateur Radio Club , KE0FXH) , and we have decided we want to build a payload for the Edge of Space Sciences launch in *February of 2016.* We plan on performing an Amateur Radio experiment to either test RF propagation at the elevation or send data packets of live information or both. Although I have plenty of parts laying around for transmitting and receiving RF signals, and processors like the Arudino or raspberry pi, for the live data, the trip will cost us $350 to get a payload on the 100,000 foot balloon launch. This Amateur Radio club is almost entirely student funded, and I have already brought in stuff for a Fox Hunt, the construction of an AllStar/ EchoLink repeater, and now we are building a Morse code transceiver. The next project will be the Balloon payload, given that we get the funds for the Launch. I would greatly appreciate if anybody would be willing to donate a bit to the club for support of the High Altitude Balloon Launch. I believe this launch will inspire many students to learn about Science and Technology, and inspire them to get a ham license. Here is a donation link. The video shows a payload, which I helped design for the STEM school in highlands ranch, Colorado, a sound propagation experiment:

https://www.gofundme.com/eu985jy4

Our club contains 5 Licensed amateurs so far, and we are recruiting more. We meet during lunch hour in one of the Science rooms. 73, and Thanks from:

Skyler Fennell KD0WHB – President, Founder, Trusty of the club Call”

To help make the launch happen we are donating a Tracksoar and will post updates about the flight soon.