[chbot] Sundays balloon-adventure, report please

[Chris Hellyar]

Hi Andre,

Can I ask a possibly not relevant question: why only 10mW?

There is unlicensed spectrum in the PRS band for telemetry, or you could 
get a ham involved and run licensed in the 70cm band (Although not that 
frequency, that's in the repeater uplink section of the band) .  Both 
options would let you run a higher bandwidth downlink.

Just curious about the design decision as a rapid ascent balloon is one 
of my (many) unfinished projects.

I made the payload container a couple of years ago and got as far as 
making the camera controller and researching GPS's. My cunning plan was 
to launch to time the burst with an ISS overhead pass and relay 
telemetry off the APRS digipeater on board.  It was my main motivation 
to getting my amateur license at the time, although now I've got the DX 
bug and that's a whole other bowl of cornies.

Cheers, Chris H.



On 07/01/13 23:58, André Geldenhuis wrote:
> Partial success I'm afraid :P
>
> The spot tracker stopped above 60k feet which we expected but I had 
> hoped it would start working once below that again.  It appears not 
> for whatever reason.     We also had a 10mW radio on board the balloon 
> transmitting location, altitude and temperature which the recovery 
> team managed to track all the way out to 80km with good decoding 
> except when the balloon was low on the horizon.  The last GPS fix was 
> at 3436m at a composite position of -44.04174, -173.04946.  The 
> position is composite as the last two messages only contained one of 
> latitude and longitude due to signal breakup.   It puts the payload 
> out to sea south of akaroa harbour.
>
>
> The balloon ascended much slower than anticipated and we are not sure 
> why yet, we are still going though the data to try and figure out what 
> happened.  The slow assent was the reason the balloon went out to sea, 
> it took much longer to reach its burst altitude. Next time we will 
> have cut downs :P
>
> We are hoping it washes up and someone finds it and returns it to us. 
> The electronics will be wreaked but the two camera SD cards and data 
> logger SD cards might still be ok and it would be nice to see the 
> pictures :)
>
> We got about 80% of the objectives for the flight though and we 
> planned to iterate all the electronics and replace the spot with a 
> spot 2 which has a ublox GPS unit so will work above 60k feet. We will 
> fly the next iteration soonish.
>
>
> I'll let the list know if we get any picures back
>
> Cheers
> Andre
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 8:51 PM, Mark Atherton <markaren1 at xtra.co.nz 
> <mailto:markaren1 at xtra.co.nz>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Andre,
>
>     Looks like it was a sucess, well done.
>
>     From http://goo.gl/1o6o6 password microprize ...
>
>     Launch time close to 10:42, with signal loss 12:51, so just over 2
>     hrs flight time (?)
>
>     Not obvious what altitude you managed, or I haven't found the
>     correct button yet.
>
>     Any chance of a quick report here and maybe a fuller report with
>     photos at the next Tait-meeting ?
>
>     Regards,
>
>     Mark
>
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Chchrobotics mailing list Chchrobotics at lists.linuxnut.co.nz
>     <mailto:Chchrobotics at lists.linuxnut.co.nz>
>     http://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/chchrobotics
>     Mail Archives: http://lists.ourshack.com/pipermail/chchrobotics/
>     Web site: http://kiwibots.org
>     Meetings 3rd Monday each month at Tait Radio Communications, 175
>     Roydvale Ave, 6.30pm
>
>     When replying, please edit your Subject line to reflect new content.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Chchrobotics mailing list Chchrobotics at lists.linuxnut.co.nz
> http://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/chchrobotics
> Mail Archives: http://lists.ourshack.com/pipermail/chchrobotics/
> Web site: http://kiwibots.org
> Meetings 3rd Monday each month at Tait Radio Communications, 175 Roydvale Ave, 6.30pm
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line to reflect new content.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ourshack.com/pipermail/chchrobotics/attachments/20130108/2acefdbb/attachment.html>