Launch Announcement - Saturday 8th September

[David Akerman]

Predictions for Saturday look good at the moment, so Darkside, RocketBoy and I are planning a bit of a balloon fest from Elsworth.  1 flight each, launching around 1pm or so.

Frequencies to be announced, but all 3 are flexible I think so we can avoid anyone else who plans to fly at the same time.

Should have live video running from the launch site and in one of the chase cars afterwards.

More details closer to the time, when we're sure the predictions will be OK and we've decided on frequencies etc.

Dave

[Graham Shirville]

should be fun – there is a nice flying display at nearbyish Duxford on Saturday afternoon– pls do NOT get in the way of XH558 http://www.vulcantothesky.org/

 

thanks!

 

Graham

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[Steve Aerospace]

We will co-ordinate with Duxford - they normally ring anyway when they have an air display and are coming over the Elsworth site.

Steve

Steve Randall

Random Engineering Ltd

st...@randomaerospace.com

+44 7802 242135

[mjc...@aol.com]

Hi Dave,

I was thinking of launching this weekend, Saturday looks best at the mo.. when you say flexible for the frequencies how flexible ...? I would either be on 075 OR 650 ..

let me know if that is possible on Saturday otherwise I'll look at Sunday ..

Cheers

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: David Akerman <calt...@gmail.com>
To: ukhas <uk...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, 4 Sep 2012 18:09
Subject: [UKHAS] Launch Announcement - Saturday 8th September

[David Akerman]

Mine and Darkside's are rfm22bs so can be moved around in the firmware.  Steve's may be an rfm22b - depends on which tracker he intends to fly.  If it's an NTX2 then it'll be on 075 or .650 so the two of you can sort that one out :-).

Dave

[Rob]

Just remembered this is happening as usual this weekend..

http://www.ballonvossenjacht.nl/

HAB with ham transponder on 145/435MHz and Live Analogue TV downlink on
2330MHz, not sure about tracker...

Rob
M0DTS

[Steve Aerospace]

I should be on 434.300.

Steve

[Mark Jessop]

My payload, Millinut, will be on 434.760MHz.
A bit of an odd frequency, but I want to stay on the lesser-used portions of the ISM band (which goes up to 434.790MHz).

This will be a 300 baud payload.

- Mark

[mjc...@aol.com]

So by the looks of things I should be able to go on either 434.075 OR 434.650 .. yes ..?


Cheers

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Aerospace <st...@randomaerospace.com>
To: ukhas <uk...@googlegroups.com>

[Anthony Stirk]

Go 434.650 Michael.

Cheers,

Anthony

[David Akerman]

Yep, up to you!

[mjc...@aol.com]

Cheers Guys, I'll go for 650 then ...

Michael

[mjc...@aol.com]

Hi,

Just want to confirm a launch this Saturday 8th from Elsworth, at around midday ish, details below.

call sign - MONDO-3

will be on 434.650Mhz

shift 425 ( ish )
bit 8
stop 1.5

I think we have four launches in all on Saturday so should be a busy day for tracking so all trackers welcome ..much appreciated

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: David Akerman <da...@sccs.co.uk>
To: ukhas <uk...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 8:25

[mjc...@aol.com]

Hi all,

Thanks to everyone who helped track today, a really good day all in all.. I've been messing about with antennas for the last couple of weeks and by the looks of it the transmission was quite a bit better than normal, got picked up over 450km away. If anyone has a recording of MONDO-3's flight today I'd like to see what the stream looked like Or any constructive criticism would be great too. I was also trying out a new 2000g balloon from India which worked quite well, not quite as high as I was hoping especially with such a small payload but still Ok..

Thanks again

Michael

[Steve Aerospace]

Likewise thanks to the listeners for XABEN-34 - also the habhub team for last minute change in payload name (sorry about that). Thanks to Dave, Julie & Mark for helping with the recovery.

Launch, flight and recovery all went well.  Millinut & Cloud were easy recoveries too.   All 3 in the middle of Norfolk fields, all within about 5 miles of each other.  Payload recovery is always fun - each a mystery tour - a mini adventure. 

All in all a great day out in the sunshine -  good to meet Mark (Darkside) in person and see Dave & Julie again.

Cheers for all the fun folks.

Steve

[David Akerman]

It was indeed a great day's HABbing.  First time I've been able to watch my balloon ascend for more than about 1 minute before it disappears into the nearest cloud!

We arrived early and watched Michael launch his Mondo balloon, then had a short chat with him.  Later on at Steve's site he launched first into a nice blue sky.  We could see it clearly for quite a while.  Darkside and I then got our payloads ready, with a minor delay when I started letting the balloon out and noticed that the parachute was on upside down!  Still not quite sure how that happened!  Anyway with that sorted Darkside and I launched simultaneously.  We had the same size/make of balloon, and similar payload weights, and the same neck lifts, but as I was using hydrogen and he helium I thought that the balloons would soon separate vertically.  They didn't!  They went up side by side and visually the seemed to be at the same altitude (and the telemetry bore this out).  My flight carried a camera and it tooks a few good shots of the other balloon!

Eventually the different properties of H2 came into play and my flight raced ahead, but even then it sometimes managed to photograph Darkside's balloon below.  See http://i.imgur.com/OT2VE.jpg for what is to me a completely stunning view of the balloon over Norfolk, then the coastline, some very pretty wispy clouds, then the familiar blackness of space.  Definitely my favourite of all my HAB payload shots.

My balloon burst first of the two, and then Darkside started think he was about to win our little "race" and get higher.  But, unfortunately for him, his balloon burst 100 metres or so below the altitude that mine got to.  Our payloads carried our respective national flags, so mine won for Queen and country :-)

All 3 of us went to each landing site - first Steve's then mine and ten Darkside's.  All landed in fields not far from a road or track, so all were pretty easy.

If Carling did HAB days ...

Dave

[Morseman]

On Sep 8, 7:12 pm, mjc3...@aol.com wrote:
> Hi all,
>

> Thanks to everyone who helped tracktoday, a really good day all in all.. I've been messing about withantennas for the last couple of weeks and by the looks of it thetransmission was quite a bit better than normal, got picked up over450km away. If anyone has a recording of MONDO-3's flight today I'dlike to see what the stream looked like Or any constructive criticismwould be great too. I was also trying out a new 2000g balloon fromIndia which worked quite well, not quite as high as I was hopingespecially with such a small payload but still Ok..
>
> Thanks again
>
> Michael

I have recordings of parts of the flights for MONDO, XABEN and even a
short part of MILLINUT if anyone wants copies?

They are WAV files captured using the DL-FLDigi record option.

I can email or dropbox them if people are interested?

Dave

[mjc...@aol.com]

Hi Dave,

Oh yes please...

Just mail to Mjc...@aol.com


cheers

Michael

 wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Thanks to everyone who helped tracktoday, a really good day all in all.. I've 
been messing about withantennas for the last couple of weeks and by the looks of 
it thetransmission was quite a bit better than normal, got picked up over450km 
away. If anyone has a recording of MONDO-3's flight today I'dlike to see what 
the stream looked like Or any constructive criticismwould be great too. I was 
also trying out a new 2000g balloon fromIndia which worked quite well, not quite 
as high as I was hopingespecially with such a small payload but still Ok..
>
> Thanks again
>
> Michael

I have recordings of parts of the flights for MONDO, XABEN and even a
short part of MILLINUT if anyone wants copies?

They are WAV files captured using the DL-FLDigi record option.

I can email or dropbox them if people are interested?

Dave

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[David Akerman]

I've now had a chance to get photos uploaded from the day:

Pix of Cloud7 payload -  http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveake/sets/72157631419200270/ 

Morning walk round the village -  http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveake/sets/72157631461557266/ 

Prep, launches and recoveries -  http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveake/sets/72157631483906920/ 

Best photos from Cloud 7 -  http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveake/sets/72157631498431574/ 

Full set of images from Cloud 7 -  http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveake/sets/72157631488987014/ 

Thanks everyone who helped track, especially with our 300 baud trackers.  I'll be back on 50 for the next flight; I'll just use 300 for SSDV I think.

The weather conditions were great, with fairly gentle winds, lots of sun and just a few mainly wispy clouds.  The result was definitely the best set of images that I've got from any of my flights, especially as some of them included Darkside's balloon.  I was expecting a few of those at low altitudes but I wasn't expecting to capture a photo of a balloon from an altitude of 34.8km!  http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveake/7971034906/in/set-72157631498431574 is the one.

Dave

[John Tanner]

Hi chaps,

Looks like somebody is famous

http://io9.com/5941932/teenager-sends-50-camera-into-space-and-captures-these-stunning-images-of-earth

John

[Anthony Stirk]

A-team :)

--

[Henry Hallam]

Very cool pictures, especially the air-to-air formation flight shots.

Henry

> To view this discussion on the web visit

> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/ukhas/-/slghn6DlbtYJ.

[Mervyn Huggett]

I thought it was The HABE team ;-)

Sent from my iPad

[Rick Hewett]

On Mon 10 Sep David Akerman wrote:
> Best photos from Cloud 7 -
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveake/sets/72157631498431574/

An excellent selection. Great to see shots of Darkside's balloon, and
the clouds put on a fine show too.

--
... 73, Rick, M0LEP (aka lazyleopard on Freenode IRC)

[Neil Baker]

Great photos.

The photo of Darkside's balloon, Norfolk, sea and space is now my desktop background.

Neil

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/ukhas/-/slghn6DlbtYJ.

[Graham Shirville]

yup – same here

 

cheers

 

Graham

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[Steve Aerospace]

Just to say I plan to use of 434.650 and 434.075 airborne on Thursday in the West country. Flight may go to 10,000ft. Sorry I don't have further details or launch times at the moment.

Steve

[Steve Daniels]

I am in the west country, I will listen out for the flight

Steve Daniels
G6UIM
Torbay Freecycle Moderator

-----Original Message-----
From: uk...@googlegroups.com [mailto:uk...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of
Steve Aerospace
Sent: 11 September 2012 17:30
To: uk...@googlegroups.com

[Steve Aerospace]

This flight has been cancelled - now expecting the flights to be Friday & Saturday next week.

Steve

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[mjc...@aol.com]

Hi Steve,

Conference next Saturday ....


Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Aerospace <st...@randomaerospace.com>
To: ukhas <uk...@googlegroups.com>

[Steve Aerospace]

Yes it may mean I cant go - still trying to work round it.

Steve

[Steve Aerospace]

Possible launch early tomorrow morning (9am ish) using XABEN1 callsign from Elsworth using 434.250 usual 425Hz 50baud transmissions. This launch will only happen if a lot of things fall into place today.

Steve G8KHW

[Steve Aerospace]

I'm cancelling this - only got about 1/2 the things done that needed to be done.

Steve

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[mjc...@aol.com]

Hi all,

Not sure if anyone has seen the pictures from the Swiss-Strato teams last launch,, I've just been looking through their shots and they are amazing,,,, Go-pro cameras have quite a wide angle lens but I love these photos, so so good..

Well done guys..

Michael ( Mondo )

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Aerospace <st...@randomaerospace.com>
To: ukhas <uk...@googlegroups.com>

[mjc...@aol.com]

Opps,

heres a link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/swiss-strato/

-----Original Message-----
From: mjc3659 <mjc...@aol.com>
To: ukhas <uk...@googlegroups.com>

[Steve Aerospace]

I don't often look at flight photos these days (there are just so many people doing HABing now).  But these were worth a look at if just for the different scenery.

But thats a worrying landing - http://www.flickr.com/photos/swiss-strato/7982677478/in/photostream

Steve

[mjc...@aol.com]

God, yeah didn't look at that one, yep pretty close ...

Like you say Steve different scenery and a beautiful clear sky which helps ...

Hope your keeping well Steve,

Mick

[mjc...@aol.com]

Hi all,

Is there anyone who can aim my in the right direction with the configuration of a RFM22 transmitter …?

I've had a look around online and the Wiki before anyone says go there, not much written on the subject really, not what's clear anyway. I use Picaxe processors which isn’t helping as there is no code about to use as a building block.

I've been through the PDF and get the rough idea of what’s going on but its really not that clear on how to set things up..

take for example:- The GPIO set up,, right if the GPIO's are directly wired to the Rx and TXANT on the transmitter then the ports need to be configured accordingly .. yes ..?

Right,, in the example code on the Wiki it uses the code :- 0X0B which is the address for GPOI-0 then the data is 0X12, which is 00010010 … Yes ..?

Now, what I'm finding hard to understand is how does 00010010 fit in to the table below ..?

EG:

                                                            0         0         0      1       0       0        1       0

0B R/W GPIO0 Configuration gpio0drv[1] gpio0drv[0] pup0 gpio0[4] gpio0[3] gpio0[2] gpio0[1] gpio0[0] 00h

I’m guessing the 0 are low and the 1's are high, is that correct...?, if so what am I switching high and low in the example above.

Is there someone who can put this into understandable English ..?

Cheers

[Steve Aerospace]

There is quite a bit about on the web on how to use the RFM_22B - and you are in luck because the reference documentation from HOPERF is all for the PIC (yea!) see the application note AN440 and transmit and receive and transmit demos for how it all works.

http://www.hoperf.cn/upload/rf/RF22B_transmit_DEMO.pdf

http://www.hoperf.cn/upload/rf/RF22B_receive_DEMO.pdf

http://www.hoperf.com/upload/rf/AN440.pdf

Steve 

[Steve Aerospace]

By the way if people are looking for a simple way to get more frequencies then the Radiometrix LMT2 looks *very* good - but I have yet to fly it (thats what I was going to fly on XABEN35 today).  The one I have on test has shown very good temperature stability - only 400Hz drift all the way down to -25C with only a marginal decrease in FSK shift. Much better than the RFM22B in that respect.

Anthony prompted me to look at this along with the modified NTX2.  I got a LMT2 way back as Radiometrix had suggested it for our application.  I never got round to trying it - primarily because the datasheet indicated that the data input was a limiter - this isn't the case and its actually quite linear (tanks for the info Anthony).  So far all testing indicates its an almost ideal transmitter for us. 

Steve G8KHW

[mjc...@aol.com]

Ahhhh, yes the register PDF is the thing I,ve been looking for ... cheers for that.. makes sense now.

That LMT2 looks good, shame you never got to try it out.

Cheers Steve for the links, everything I was finding online was for that other make of processor ( you know the one ) lol

Hopefully see you next Saturday,

Cheers again

Michael

[Steve Aerospace]

Hi Folks,
I'm currently expecting to launch XABEN 35 Tuesday/Wednesday(9th/10th) out of the Brecon Beacons. Sorry I'm not sure of the time yet. All depending on weather and jetstream of course.

There will be 2 trackers attached to this flight:

Callsign XABEN0 - 434.075MHz 425Hz shift ASCII 7n1
Callsign XABEN1 - 434.250MHz 600Hz shift ASCII 7n1

The former is the standard NTX2 transmitter, the latter is a test of the LMT2 (which has performed well in ground tests).

Any listeners would be most welcome - some feedback on comparative signal strength, quality, frequency drift, shift narrowing etc. would be appreciated.

[Steve Aerospace]

Now expecting this flight to be tomorrow - probably early afternoon.

Steve

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[Steve Aerospace]

Thanks to everyone that tracked - apologies it was launched rather late in the day (3pm) and I wan't able to provide any warning (no mobile coverage there).

How did people find the 434.250 signal - frequency stability? signal strength?

Steve

[navrac]

I found the frequency stability on the new tracker to be very god - I didn't have to retune the radio from when I picked it up till I lost it on the way down. Probably didn't need autotune on fldigi either - I lined it up on 2kHz and it didn't seem to shit more than 100Hz. To be honest it needed so little attention to track I didnt pay it much attention - other than occasionally to check on drift. I did miss the early part of the launch though as I had missed the launch posting so there could have been drift in the early stages on the way up - but no sign on the way down. Signal strength was good - Slightly better than the old tracker, but it was pretty close to be honest.

It looks like a good module - shame about its power consumption otherwise I'd be ordering some!

Richard (navrac)

[Anthony Stirk]

Sadly was out of range for me (I'm in Crete...) if there is interest in these I'll speak to Radiometrix and see what price I can get them for, however if we (Navrac) manages to stabilise the RFM22B they might be redundant.

Cheers from sunny Crete

Anthony

Sent from my iPhone

[Ed Moore]

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Anthony Stirk <upu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> if we (Navrac) manages to stabilise the RFM22B they might be redundant.

... for RTTY.

[navrac]

thanks to Dave, ZS6BNT for  pointing out that shift has an f in it, mind you good should have 2 o's as well.

 

[Rick Hewett]

On Thu 11 Oct Steve Aerospace wrote:
> How did people find the 434.250 signal - frequency stability? signal
> strength?

I seem to remember both trackers being pretty good, but XABEN1 being
slightly less wavery than XABEN0, as it's the one I stuck with most of
the time.

>>> Callsign XABEN0 - 434.075MHz 425Hz shift ASCII 7n1
>>> Callsign XABEN1 - 434.250MHz 600Hz shift ASCII 7n1
>>>
>>> The former is the standard NTX2 transmitter, the latter is a test of
>>> the LMT2 (which has performed well in ground tests).

--
... 73, Rick, M0LEP (aka lazyleopard on Freenode IRC)