Welcome Cambridge University Spaceflight, team number 007!

[Paul]

Cambridge University Spaceflight have now signed up as team 007 - this
means that the Brits are (if my maths serves me right) the most
represented nation on the N-Prize (or should that be "the most star
craving mad nation"?).

Now that there are several UK entrants, maybe we ought to think of a
get-together, if only as an excuse for me to come off the Atkins diet
for an evening....

Team details will be up on the site soon...

Best,
Paul

[Ed]

You came off it for an evening the last time we did that. I also agree
that a meet-up would be good. Name your weekend.

Our plan is to fractionally distill Pinot Grigio into ethanol and
water, the latter will then by hydrolyzed into Lox. Hey presto, Lox/
Ethanol rocket.

Actually, we don't have a plan yet, but we're currently well into
building our 100+km rocket to be launched from a zero-pressure
balloon. We hope then to scale up for the N-prize, though with the
added complications of active guidance and needing some more ISP on
the upper stage(s).

Our history is with high altitude balloons, only recently have we
collectively got into rocketry.

We're about 8 people strong, all undergrad, have design meetings in
pubs, and our stated aim is to launch a rocket into space. We're
hopefully not too far away from that, at which point the stated aim
might change slightly to reflect the post above! I think the N-prize
is the perfect place to go once we've popped over the 100km barrier,
and that's why we've joined up. And there's no way I'm giving up the
fun of messing around with balloons and rockets once we achieve the
100km goal.

I have been lurking since the beginning, had the pleasure of meeting
Paul for a burger and chips at the Castle in Cambridge a few months
back (Castle Burger? Potential UK get-together?) and was entirely
persuaded that this was quite the best way to avoid getting a proper
job for the next couple of years. I've also been deeply impressed/(or,
given this is a competition, perhaps worried by) the competence of
everyone else, so I know this is for real. And we can't wait!

P.S if anyone gets this in the next hour, we have a high altitude
balloon floating around England, just north of Cambridge. Peter, if
you get this, point your Yagi due north and tune to 434.650 Mhz. It's
RTTY, 50-baud, 425Hz shift, reversed ascii-7. You should get a text
string with " Badger: secs since
reset,time,lat,long,alt,numberofsats,gpshealth ". Alternatively, we
have an fm receiver plugged into a puter with an IRC bot automatically
printing it to an IRC channel on freenode: #highaltitude99

Geeky postscript, granted!

[Peter Jones]

Hi Ed

Is it bursting data every 4 seconds? If not, then I'm locked onto
something else on your frequency!

As for a get-together, then I'm all up for it. Just let me know when
and where. Cambridge is a relatively short distance from me (in
astronomical terms) so if your team, Paul and the others would prefer
it there then that's OK by me.

Cheers

Peter

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[Peter Jones]

Nope, the signal's still there but the IRC channel isn't so I guess I
missed it. Let me know the next time another one goes up and I'll be
better prepared (and have my laptop battery fully charged up ...
grrrr)

Cheers

Peter

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[Ed]

Peter - bizarre, the channel is still operational, though all activity
has moved to #highaltitude which is the usual place for general
chat :)

That could well have been us - the mission went on longer than
expected due to a failed cut-down, so we actually just broke our
altitude record with 33km.

I think we may be launching again tomorrow. A friend tracked the thing
from central london to its landing site in peterborough and only
started loosing charcaters when it was 1 degree elevation from him,
and that was with a whip antenna. So it makes me think 10mW is plenty
for a sattelite orbiting at 250km.

I'll post a link to any pictures we get here when the recovery guys
get back.

Ed