Possible flight Monday night
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Paul Lowell
Jun 23, 2019, 4:51:19 PM6/23/19
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I'm wanting to test out a 916MHz LoRa T-Beam system. And I have a low-light camera (Runcam Night Eagle 2 pro) that needs testing. And I have a few other things to test...
If the SpaceX STP-2 flight seems to be going as planned, then I'll send up NSL-74 from my home in Apex tomorrow night. If I launch around 2145EDT, then there is the small chance that I'll be able to video the Falcon Heavy launch from over Raleigh. The STP-2 launch path is east and not up the coast, but it would be an interesting test of this camera.
My payload would then land in northeast Raleigh just after midnight.
Paul Lowell
Jun 25, 2019, 4:16:24 PM6/25/19
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<Yawn>
RF and heat dissipation were big issues.
So yeah, I ended up launching around 0140 this morning. I had a lot of equipment failures, but I was able to pick up the payload on the side of the road a few minutes after landing.
RF and heat dissipation were big issues.
I was delayed about 20 minutes in launch trying to fix a GPS interference issue. I had a good integration test, but this morning the two GPS units did not like each other, nor the cameras. Lots of aluminum foil helped. That 20 minutes meant that I was only at 50,000ft during the SpaceX launch instead of the intended 75,000ft.
The Runcam and its recorder get HOT. I figured that this was a good thing when going to -40C, but it apparently got really toasty inside the payload. This affected the noise floor of the video and the camera even got tunnel vision during the toasty parts of the flight. The payload smelt of burnt plastic upon landing.
The Runcam and its recorder get HOT. I figured that this was a good thing when going to -40C, but it apparently got really toasty inside the payload. This affected the noise floor of the video and the camera even got tunnel vision during the toasty parts of the flight. The payload smelt of burnt plastic upon landing.
Jason Unwin
Jun 28, 2019, 1:04:20 PM6/28/19
to NC Near Space Research
Did you have to get a waiver to fly at night? Did you have a flashing beacon of some sort? You are the first person I have ever heard fly at night. The pictures are great!
Christopher Gorski
Jun 28, 2019, 1:15:38 PM6/28/19
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Nope... below the weight (and other) limits spelled out in 14 CFR §101.1, the federal aviation regulations say that none of the notice, position reports, authorization, altitude limit, etc. stuff applies to us. There's no rule of which I am aware which forbids or limits night flight.
Night flights just don't usually give very interesting pictures, and they require us old fogeys (or our younger kids) to be up all night, and still have to go back the next day to usually pull a box out of a tree or something ( :
--me
On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 1:04 PM Jason Unwin <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
Did you have to get a waiver to fly at night? Did you have a flashing beacon of some sort? You are the first person I have ever heard fly at night. The pictures are great!
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Jason Unwin
Jun 28, 2019, 5:46:40 PM6/28/19
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Well, I think it is original to see the Earth from high altitude at night. How does the night flight effect balloon performance? Is the rate of climb less? I would think it would be less without the sun heating the gas in the balloon. I'm probably wrong but just a thought.
On Friday, June 28, 2019 at 12:15:38 PM UTC-5, Christopher Gorski wrote:
Nope... below the weight (and other) limits spelled out in 14 CFR §101.1, the federal aviation regulations say that none of the notice, position reports, authorization, altitude limit, etc. stuff applies to us. There's no rule of which I am aware which forbids or limits night flight.Night flights just don't usually give very interesting pictures, and they require us old fogeys (or our younger kids) to be up all night, and still have to go back the next day to usually pull a box out of a tree or something ( :--me
On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 1:04 PM Jason Unwin <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
Did you have to get a waiver to fly at night? Did you have a flashing beacon of some sort? You are the first person I have ever heard fly at night. The pictures are great!
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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "NC Near Space Research" group.
Visit the Google Group web page at http://groups.google.com/group/ncnearspace?hl=en
or our public web page at http://www.ncnearspace.org/
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Christopher Gorski
Jun 28, 2019, 10:57:18 PM6/28/19
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I’m not sure if we have a big enough sample size to be sure! Haven’t done many at night... and most of the times we have, were near twilight so the balloon was in daylight anyway.
Paul was trying out a new low light camera this time. The daylight cameras we usually use can’t cope with night photos while they’re swinging wildly in the wind... at best you end up with streaks where lights were.
This wasn’t the clearest set of photos in the world, but it compensated for a lot of the problems we’ve had ... and it sure was a fun picture set!
--me
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Paul Lowell
Jul 1, 2019, 2:28:33 PM7/1/19
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I'm back from the Radio Quiet Zone finally and should be able to finish up the write-up on the flight this week. I will probably need to "stack" images from the video to remove the high background noise.
Repeating Mr. Gorski, we have a pretty small sample size. The National Weather Service launches 92 of these a day -- about 1/2 at night. I wonder what their results show?
I've only had seven night (or night-adjacent) flights. Three of those burst below the predicted altitude, which is pretty unusual. Normal daytime flights almost always exceed the predicted altitude.
My belief, especially early on, was that the cold was limiting the stretch of the latex. But I'm not sure I can back that up (circumstantial). For all I know, the sun's UV could be causing early breakdown in the latex. And solar heating could be more detrimental than advantageous. ??
My belief, especially early on, was that the cold was limiting the stretch of the latex. But I'm not sure I can back that up (circumstantial). For all I know, the sun's UV could be causing early breakdown in the latex. And solar heating could be more detrimental than advantageous. ??
I should probably go back and look at my ascent rate graphs. I've always just assumed that I would get an additional 1m/s increase above 20km due to solar heating -- just based upon what I usually see. But I haven't run the numbers and compared that with the few flights that burst in the dark.
Paul Lowell
Jul 4, 2019, 1:25:32 PM7/4/19
to NC Near Space Research
There...
I think I'm done with trying to extract images from the night flight.
I think I'm done with trying to extract images from the night flight.
Synchronizing the video with GPS time and then with the SpaceX launch was kinda fun in a tedious sort of way. It was too low to catch launch or landing, but it recorded the first stage events outside of that (staging, boost back, entry burns).
Stacking astronomical video frames are much easier than those from a spinning payload.
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