Re: Launch Announcement - Horizon 2 - 23rd March - Walsall, UK

[MikeB]

Hi

Regarding the SPOT tracker, don't they have a very limited operational altitude?

MikeB

 

On Friday, March 8, 2013 10:36:35 PM UTC, A. Coghlan wrote:

Team: Project Horizon

All being well we plan to launch at 10am (Hab time) from:

Location: Queen Mary's Grammar School, Walsall, WS1 2PG, UK
Latitude: 52.576943
Longitude: -1.964499
Altitude: 135m

A small chase team will set out about 10:30am.

The launch is a full launch for all of our equipment (a radio tracker, smartphone, camera and sensor array). We may also have a SPOT tracker on board.

Tracker information:

Tracker: HORIZ2
Frequency: 434.075
Carrier Shift: 650
Baud Rate: 50
Bits per character: 7 (ASCII)
Parity: 0
Stop Bits: 2

We are looking into having a live video stream up and running on the day of the launch (we have requested an open port from the LEA, now we just have to wait).

[MikeB]

Hi Chris,

It certainly would be good to clear up the inconsistency. Do SPOT units quiet due to the COCOM 18Km altitude limit or because their temperature has dropped too low when passing through the troposphere (or both)? Good luck with your test flight.

MikeB

On Saturday, March 9, 2013 7:04:05 PM UTC, chris hillcox wrote:

They do but they stay active when outside the altitude limits and start to re transmit when the payload comes back down. Mind you if you look at all the projects that use them, there is a great deal of inconsistency in when they go 'quiet'. It would be good to trial SPOT with a radio tracker and get some data on how high they go 'quiet'.  At least I would be interested.

Chris

[Anthony Stirk]

Well SPOT's own site says 6500 meters (21300 feet) :

http://www.findmespot.eu/en/index.php?cid=102

However its been reported it does work above this :

http://www.unr.edu/nevadasat/balloonsats/balloonsat%20pages/SPOT.html

They are very inconsistent though so a single flight is unlikely to clear anything up.

CHeers,

Anthony

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[Steve Aerospace]

I believe the Spot update rate is limited to a maximum of once every 10 minutes - so about every 10,000ft at typical ascent rates - so it would take lots of flights to get any resolution on the limit.  It would be better to hack into the Spot GPS interface and find the limits with ground testing. 

http://hackaday.com/2011/10/01/hacking-spot-personal-satellite-tracker-to-pass-more-information/

I've heard of Spot working to 28,000ft on one flight.

I believe the Inreach will report its position higher - but the altitude is wrong above about 29,000ft.  The Inreach is even more of a brick than the Spot.

Steve

Steve Randall

Random Engineering Ltd

st...@randomaerospace.com

+44 7802 242135

[David Akerman]

Another possibility for satellite comms is the RockBlock - http://rockblock.rock7mobile.com/ - then you can use a faithful ublox GPS instead of worrying about whatever dodgy GPS the Spot uses.  It's pretty easy to interface one of these things to an AVR or PIC.  Oh, and you get 2-way comms.

Dave

[Ed Moore]

Note this hackaday.com link is describing natrium42's work (for the happy peeps who've discovered ukhas more recently, he's a ukhas member who started spacenear.us). He might recall the details more directly.

Ed

[MikeB]

Dave, 

After considering a number of satellite communications services, including: OrbComm, Globalstar and Iridium, I purchased a Rockblock board, because the Iridium network seemed to offer the best compromise of afford-ability, coverage, and message latency. I was therefore pleased to discover that the task of developing telemetry and command software has potentially been made much easer by J. Malsbury, of the Californian Near Space Project, who has written the following Python based emulator...  http://www.cnsp-inc.com/a-little-python-saves-big-on-iridium-sbd/

[november...@gmail.com]

Preictable eh? Said the canadian :P

---

From: "A. Coghlan" <acogh...@googlemail.com>

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Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2013 06:48:50 -0700 (PDT)

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Cc: <da...@sccs.co.uk>

Subject: Re: [UKHAS] Re: Launch Announcement - Horizon 2 - 23rd March - Walsall, UK

LAUNCH CANCELLED: Due to significant snowfall across the whole flight path and steadily strengthening winds it will be impossible to launch or recover the project.

We have had one good bit of news: I have had an email from a reporter in Reading to say that a member of the general public has been in touch who thinks they may have found Horizon 1 - we're waiting for photos.

We're trying to arrange a new launch date that won't impact on examinations as the team is drawn from examination years (Year 11 and Sixth Form).