CLOUD3 Flight Announcement
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daveake
Jan 31, 2012, 12:10:42 PM1/31/12
to UKHAS
I'm planning on launching Cloud3 this Saturday morning at around
10am. There will be 2 tracking payloads (see below) so it would be
great to have as many of you tracking as possible.
This is a mainly a photographic flight carrying a Canon A495 camera
for stills and Kodak Zx1 camcorder for HD video. Both have large SD
cards and ample battery life for the complete flight. These are in
the main payload together with an NTX2 transmitter broadcasting RTTY
on 434.650MHz with 425Hz shift as "CLOUD", 50 baud, 7 bits, no parity,
2 stop bits. The box will also contain an old mobile phone sending
texts to me when below 2km, every 30 minutes if it's not flying and
every 30 seconds if it is.
More interesting though to some there's a secondary test payload using
an RMF22B to transmit RTTY. This is on 434.2MHz with 470Hz shift as
"BUZZ", 50 baud, 7 bits, no parity, 2 stop bits.
It would be great if we can have some trackers following each
payload. In particular it would be interesting to see how the RFM22B
copes with long range and with low temperatures vs drift compared with
the NTX2. Both payloads have internal and external temperature
sensors and also pressure sensors. Once the balloon bursts, just use
follow whichever payload works best for you, to give me the best
chance of retrieval!
The balloon is a 1000g Hwoyee, and total weight of both payloads
including chute/line will be around 900g. Burst height should be
somewhere between 32 and 35km depending on the phase of the moon in
China when the balloon was made, and if I need to adjust the flight
path at all. At present predictions show it going south-west from the
launch site near Newbury in Berks, then east towards London, then
swinging back south-west to land somewhere towards the coast (but not
too close, not yet anyway!).
Anyone who fancies coming along to watch/laugh/help is very welcome.
Dave
10am. There will be 2 tracking payloads (see below) so it would be
great to have as many of you tracking as possible.
This is a mainly a photographic flight carrying a Canon A495 camera
for stills and Kodak Zx1 camcorder for HD video. Both have large SD
cards and ample battery life for the complete flight. These are in
the main payload together with an NTX2 transmitter broadcasting RTTY
on 434.650MHz with 425Hz shift as "CLOUD", 50 baud, 7 bits, no parity,
2 stop bits. The box will also contain an old mobile phone sending
texts to me when below 2km, every 30 minutes if it's not flying and
every 30 seconds if it is.
More interesting though to some there's a secondary test payload using
an RMF22B to transmit RTTY. This is on 434.2MHz with 470Hz shift as
"BUZZ", 50 baud, 7 bits, no parity, 2 stop bits.
It would be great if we can have some trackers following each
payload. In particular it would be interesting to see how the RFM22B
copes with long range and with low temperatures vs drift compared with
the NTX2. Both payloads have internal and external temperature
sensors and also pressure sensors. Once the balloon bursts, just use
follow whichever payload works best for you, to give me the best
chance of retrieval!
The balloon is a 1000g Hwoyee, and total weight of both payloads
including chute/line will be around 900g. Burst height should be
somewhere between 32 and 35km depending on the phase of the moon in
China when the balloon was made, and if I need to adjust the flight
path at all. At present predictions show it going south-west from the
launch site near Newbury in Berks, then east towards London, then
swinging back south-west to land somewhere towards the coast (but not
too close, not yet anyway!).
Anyone who fancies coming along to watch/laugh/help is very welcome.
Dave
Solar Balloonman
Feb 3, 2012, 7:00:29 AM2/3/12
to UKHAS
Weather could be a problem for launching. This weekend there is SNOW
predicted for most of the UK.
predicted for most of the UK.
David Akerman
Feb 3, 2012, 8:01:18 AM2/3/12
to uk...@googlegroups.com
At the moment the snow is forecast for the evening, so we should be fine in that regard.
The winds are changeable during the day and at the moment the best opportunity is to launch at about 1pm, so that's the current plan.
I'll post again in the morning after the last wind data update happens.
Dave
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David Akerman
Feb 4, 2012, 3:57:08 AM2/4/12
to uk...@googlegroups.com
Still on for a launch at 1pm today. The prediction is pretty much unchanged since yesterday,.
For the Buzz payload you'll have to set the audio shift manually to 470Hz, as the auto-configure value is still set to 425Hz from my previous launch.
Aiming for a quickish ascent rate to reduce the chances of overshooting into the sea, an the calculator says 5.74m/s and burst at 30km. Balloon is a Hwoyee 1000g. If it bursts later the payload will land further east and a bit further north, which is further away from the sea so that's good.
As well as the CLOUD (NTX2) and BUZZ trackers (RFM22B) I also have CLOUD set up to send me texts from a phone on descent below 2km.
Dave
daveake
Feb 6, 2012, 2:02:35 PM2/6/12
to UKHAS
Well, most of you will know by now that this was one of the more, erm,
"interesting" flights :-). The ascent rate was a little lower than I
was hoping for (and lower than I needed) even though I used the entire
contents of the helium cylinder. Once I saw the rate showing
consistently at just over 5m/s I knew there was a very good chance of
a wet landing.
Ed Moore and David Robertson came along for the bacon butties and were
persuaded to help with the launch :-). That went smoothly after I
walked back home to retrieve a minor item* that I'd forgotten to pack
in the car.
* the balloon
After packing up the chase car wouldn't start! I now owe Julie (Mrs
Dave) a new car battery as hers was obviously a bit worn and couldn't
cope with running the tracking kit for a couple of hours. After
having to read the car manual to find out how to get to the battery
(hidden under the passenger seat) we hooked up the jump leads to
David's car and got started straightaway. So now you know why there
was no data shortly after launch!
In the chase car we had a fairly weak signal from the main (cloud)
payload, probably because the aerial was bent over a little though it
seemed worse than I'd expect even taking that into account. Buzz
meanwhile worked very very well, despite using an rfm22b transmitter
set to a lower power than the NTX2 in Cloud. An impressive result for
the new boy. Once I saw the difference I set my receiver to Buzz for
the remainder of the flight.
The burst happened a little earlier than I expected and the live
predictor did then show a wet landing. I'd fitted a smallish
parachute and I was hoping that this would bring it down on land, but
that wasn't to be. We lost contact with Buzz when it was about 600
metres up, and we then headed to the beach at Shoreham-by-sea, close
to the predicted landing spot. As we got within a couple of miles of
the beach I still couldn't hear any signal from Buzz at all, so I
switched to the Cloud frequency and was very very pleased to see 2
faint lines appear on the waterfall. Those got much stronger as we
got closer, and by the time we got to the road along by the beach I
was getting full decodes. Those showed that the GPS position was
still updating, so we still had live tracking. Excellent!
So my bouy was bouncing around about 500 metres out. I tried to spot
it but couldn't. The wind was cold and coming straight in from the
sea, so I wondered if that would be enough to bring the payload in to
the coast somewhere.
I was convinced we were going to have to find someone with a boat and
the willingness to go out in it, but then Ed pointed out that it was
15 minutes after low tide. So with the wind and the tide on our side,
maybe it would work out OK without intervention! Sure enough, after a
while the tracking showed the payload moving *directly* towards us!
We had enough time for some food, so we drove to a nearby fish&chip
shop before returning to the beach to stuff our faces and await the
payload's return. So, about 100 minutes after splashdown, both
payloads complete with parachute a lump of latex washed up on the
shore!
Luck was on my side that day!
Full write-up in my blog at http://www.daveakerman.com/?p=220
Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveake/sets/72157629187109165/
Dave
On Feb 4, 8:57 am, David Akerman <d...@sccs.co.uk> wrote:
> Still on for a launch at 1pm today. The prediction is pretty much
> unchanged since yesterday,.
>
> For the Buzz payload you'll have to set the audio shift manually to 470Hz,
> as the auto-configure value is still set to 425Hz from my previous launch.
>
> Aiming for a quickish ascent rate to reduce the chances of overshooting
> into the sea, an the calculator says 5.74m/s and burst at 30km. Balloon is
> a Hwoyee 1000g. If it bursts later the payload will land further east and
> a bit further north, which is further away from the sea so that's good.
>
> Prediction here -http://habhub.org/predict/#!/uuid=15c953fc7e45e296da4df6027df3e6a3b7b...
"interesting" flights :-). The ascent rate was a little lower than I
was hoping for (and lower than I needed) even though I used the entire
contents of the helium cylinder. Once I saw the rate showing
consistently at just over 5m/s I knew there was a very good chance of
a wet landing.
Ed Moore and David Robertson came along for the bacon butties and were
persuaded to help with the launch :-). That went smoothly after I
walked back home to retrieve a minor item* that I'd forgotten to pack
in the car.
* the balloon
After packing up the chase car wouldn't start! I now owe Julie (Mrs
Dave) a new car battery as hers was obviously a bit worn and couldn't
cope with running the tracking kit for a couple of hours. After
having to read the car manual to find out how to get to the battery
(hidden under the passenger seat) we hooked up the jump leads to
David's car and got started straightaway. So now you know why there
was no data shortly after launch!
In the chase car we had a fairly weak signal from the main (cloud)
payload, probably because the aerial was bent over a little though it
seemed worse than I'd expect even taking that into account. Buzz
meanwhile worked very very well, despite using an rfm22b transmitter
set to a lower power than the NTX2 in Cloud. An impressive result for
the new boy. Once I saw the difference I set my receiver to Buzz for
the remainder of the flight.
The burst happened a little earlier than I expected and the live
predictor did then show a wet landing. I'd fitted a smallish
parachute and I was hoping that this would bring it down on land, but
that wasn't to be. We lost contact with Buzz when it was about 600
metres up, and we then headed to the beach at Shoreham-by-sea, close
to the predicted landing spot. As we got within a couple of miles of
the beach I still couldn't hear any signal from Buzz at all, so I
switched to the Cloud frequency and was very very pleased to see 2
faint lines appear on the waterfall. Those got much stronger as we
got closer, and by the time we got to the road along by the beach I
was getting full decodes. Those showed that the GPS position was
still updating, so we still had live tracking. Excellent!
So my bouy was bouncing around about 500 metres out. I tried to spot
it but couldn't. The wind was cold and coming straight in from the
sea, so I wondered if that would be enough to bring the payload in to
the coast somewhere.
I was convinced we were going to have to find someone with a boat and
the willingness to go out in it, but then Ed pointed out that it was
15 minutes after low tide. So with the wind and the tide on our side,
maybe it would work out OK without intervention! Sure enough, after a
while the tracking showed the payload moving *directly* towards us!
We had enough time for some food, so we drove to a nearby fish&chip
shop before returning to the beach to stuff our faces and await the
payload's return. So, about 100 minutes after splashdown, both
payloads complete with parachute a lump of latex washed up on the
shore!
Luck was on my side that day!
Full write-up in my blog at http://www.daveakerman.com/?p=220
Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveake/sets/72157629187109165/
Dave
On Feb 4, 8:57 am, David Akerman <d...@sccs.co.uk> wrote:
> Still on for a launch at 1pm today. The prediction is pretty much
> unchanged since yesterday,.
>
> For the Buzz payload you'll have to set the audio shift manually to 470Hz,
> as the auto-configure value is still set to 425Hz from my previous launch.
>
> Aiming for a quickish ascent rate to reduce the chances of overshooting
> into the sea, an the calculator says 5.74m/s and burst at 30km. Balloon is
> a Hwoyee 1000g. If it bursts later the payload will land further east and
> a bit further north, which is further away from the sea so that's good.
>
>
> As well as the CLOUD (NTX2) and BUZZ trackers (RFM22B) I also have CLOUD
> set up to send me texts from a phone on descent below 2km.
>
> Dave
>
> As well as the CLOUD (NTX2) and BUZZ trackers (RFM22B) I also have CLOUD
> set up to send me texts from a phone on descent below 2km.
>
> Dave
>
> On 3 February 2012 13:01, David Akerman <d...@sccs.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > At the moment the snow is forecast for the evening, so we should be fine
> > in that regard.
>
> > The winds are changeable during the day and at the moment the best
> > opportunity is to launch at about 1pm, so that's the current plan.
>
> > I'll post again in the morning after the last wind data update happens.
>
> > Dave
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > At the moment the snow is forecast for the evening, so we should be fine
> > in that regard.
>
> > The winds are changeable during the day and at the moment the best
> > opportunity is to launch at about 1pm, so that's the current plan.
>
> > I'll post again in the morning after the last wind data update happens.
>
> > Dave
>
Steve Kozachik
Jan 31, 2012, 5:36:22 PM1/31/12
to uk...@googlegroups.com
Dave
Wishing you the best of luck from Seattle. I am not too hopeful that we will get a tracking signal here, unless you drift a bit from your target landing!
Steve K.
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daveake
Feb 9, 2012, 8:39:44 AM2/9/12
to UKHAS
It was remiss of me not to give thanks to jcoxon for doing all that
work on getting the rfm22b transceiver running. Without his code and
information there's no way I would have got that test payload up and
running so quickly. Thanks also to navrac for helping me with hints
and tips on the rfm22b.
Dave
work on getting the rfm22b transceiver running. Without his code and
information there's no way I would have got that test payload up and
running so quickly. Thanks also to navrac for helping me with hints
and tips on the rfm22b.
Dave
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