DIY Near Space Balloon Transmitter: 60 Mile Range on a Budget

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tackyattack
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I am thinking about launching a near space balloon. I'm going to send up a microcontroller with a pressure sensor that outputs audible beeps according to the height data from the pressure sensor. The problem is I don't have a way to transmit this audio data back down to earth. What is the cheapest, simplest way to make a transmitter that can transmit 60 miles line-of-sight? I don't want to buy a ham radio transmitter cause those things cost $100+. Any ideas?
 
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What's this about audible beeps? Why would you bother with audible beeps? The cheapest way might be to buy a GSM chip and communicate through cell phone towers.
 


Don't know how far up you think "near space" is, but if you get up as high as balloons can go, "audible" is not going to have much meaning since there won't be enough atmosphere to transmit much sound.
 


KingNothing said:
What's this about audible beeps? Why would you bother with audible beeps? The cheapest way might be to buy a GSM chip and communicate through cell phone towers.

By audible I mean pulses of electricity that is fed into the communicator's input, on the receiving end I hook up a speaker to communicator. The pulses make sound on the communication unit on the ground. The sound will change according to height.

What is the range of cell towers? Would It be able to reach all the way up there?