On 18th May 2001, we have conducted very long distance communication test at Sanriku, Iwate, assisted by ISAS. The objective of this test is mainly to verify the communication function of CUTE. The model on board balloon is equipped with CUTE communication module: 1 FM transmitter, 1 CW transmitter and 1 FM receiver.
  The balloon has been launched at 7:37 a.m., and brought up to a height of 35,000 meters. After about 4 hours, at 11:43 a.m., the experiment bodule has landed on the water. The maximum distance from Sanriku ground station to the balloon has reached about 60,000 meters, and the maximum surrounding temperature has reached about -40 degrees.
  As a result, some equipments, FM transceivers and so on, have not worked well, but most of equipments have worked well. At Titech O-okayama campus ground station, about 450 kilometers distant from Sanriku, we could receive CW-telemetry and decode the received data. Therefore, we have verified many functions of CUTE. On this experiments, we have received many reports from hams and share much information with them. We deeply appreciate for their cooperation.
  We will make this result be of great use designing CUTE-I engineering model and flight model.

  Balloon Experiment Module

  The equipments for balloon experiment

  The overvier of test

  The downlink data