Brave Puffin launch

Slava Asipenko

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Sep 17, 2026, 6:56:02 AMSep 17

to Microtransat

Hello friends,

After a busy summer of building and testing, I launched one boat a few weeks ago from Boston. Details in the latest post here: https://bravepuffin.com/posts/2026-september-update/

And congrats to the Oshen team!

Slava

Peter Facey

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Sep 17, 2026, 10:16:58 AMSep 17

to Microtransat

Brave Puffin 2026 looks nice. I wondered why it seems to have no top deck (below the solar). Also wondered if you found that the gimbal-mounted thing (not sure if that is GPS or Iridium) works through the above solar panel.

Slava Asipenko

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Sep 17, 2026, 9:18:03 PMSep 17

to Peter Facey, Microtransat

Good questions!

There's a solid, 2 inch thick, closed cell foam board under the solar panel on both boats. Serves as something the panel sits on, and provides extra buoyancy in case of capsizing.

A regular GPS receiver with a passive antenna works well through the solar panel. The gimbal mounted tracker is a SPOT Trace device which uses Globalstar satellites - it too works well through the panel. However, Iridium SBD modems (such as RockBlock 9603) do not. The only reliable solution I found was to use a proper Iridium certified antenna, mounted externally, out of the panel's shadow.

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