so: Maker Faire.

[Christopher Gorski]

So:  We've been called awesome by the Maker Faire people -- http://makerfairenc.com/journal/2012/1/12/exhibitor-applications-meet-your-maker-coordinator.html if you missed the link the first time around.

I am assuming we are planning on having a Maker Faire exhibit again this year!   And their mission statement for 2012 is to Increase The Awesome.


I propose we start (now) by picking one thing to make More Awesome than last year, and hash out the details now by mailing list.   (We can do more than one awesome thing, to be sure!  But let's pick at least one to make sure we don't drop the ball.

And of course, that gives us a chance to figure out the how-tos in the meantime--and make engineering practice launches if we need to work the kinks out.  (Hey, why not an excuse for a launch, anyhow?  We haven't done one in a while...)

So:  What to do?  Suggestions so far include real-time imagery OR using Trappe's zero-pressure cell to see how far we can fly.

Any other suggestions?  Any thoughts on the benefits of these?



Real-time sounds like something we might like anyways--be it video or stills.  It also seems like something we'd like to perfect /before/ the long-haul flight, since that will most likely end up in the Atlantic Ocean and never be recovered.  But, if we can track it all the way, we get bragging rights even without photographs...  BUT, we'll need some amount of new gear for this...  Counting people who were here since we started we have at least, what--five licensed hams in the group?  Has anybody done packet radio aside from aprs location updates before, or alternately, TV?  Another BUT: Broadcasting UHF/VHF packets for location only works so well because there's a well established network of friendly hams listening and relaying.  Would we have to physically give chase and manually upload what we receive?  This isn't impossible--but it's a pain, and we didn't have much luck with NSL-1 that way.  Alternately, I don't know anything about this -- are there provisions for such things in HF, and would they be reliable enough to be worth a shot?  Would all this involve such large power consumption as to be prohibitive?

A long-haul transoceanic flight sounds like it would be even cooler to say you saw the start of at Maker Faire.  BUT, we're less likely to make it to land in June than maybe November, and less likely starting from Raleigh than if we drove down east to launch.   And again, this'd be cooler if we could say we had a way to relay pictures back.  Or even coordinates--do we know what our ceiling is likely to be?  SPOT won't function at all above that certain height, and even if we did have our ITAR-picky GPS set up, all we've ever successfully relayed to date while still in flight is SPOT data...




Thoughts?  Alternatives?   (:

--me