Launch Announcement Saturday 13/04/13

[Anthony Stirk]

Hi all,

I'll be launching another AVA on Saturday from Cambridge area. Should be about 11am ISH this will be a dual transmitter payload with the usual 70cms RTTY on 434.450Mhz 7N2 call sign $$AVA. This payload will have the APRS transmitter (M0UPU-11) installed but is subject to geofencing for controlling where it can transmit when airborne. The aim will be to get this into a float as such I'm aiming for quite a low ascent rate so as long as the balloon plays ball it should be a long flight. The flight path does currently take this to the welcoming arms of the Polish listeners yay !

i would ask for the priority for receivers to be on Dave's payload due to the SSDV transmissions however if one or two people  could stick on AVA it would be great. 

Thanks,

Anthony

[David Akerman]

My flight will also be from Elsworth on Saturday, as the predictions from home seemed rather attracted to London and one or two of its airports.

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[David Akerman]

Some more info on my Pi flight.

This is using 2 NTX2 transmitters, both nominally 434.075MHz however they are shifted apart, currently by 4kHz but I might adjust that.  This means that those with an SDR will be able to use the one receiver to receive and decode both transmissions.

I'll explain my setup but you may need to do it differently depending on the software you use:

• Set up two virtual audio channels (I use "VAC" with Windows but other programs and operating systems are available).  This creates 2 virtual sound devices.  You're going to feed the signal from one transmission through one, and the other through the other.
• Run 2 copies of the SDR software (I used HDSDR with a Funcube dongle)
• Set the frequency so that the range 434.070-434.075MHz is comfortably within the bandwidth shown.  Do this in either copy - it affects both and if the flight is up you should see 2 traces one for each transmitter.
• Set one copy of the SDR software to output to one of the virtual audio devices (e.g. "Line 1 (Virtual Audio Cable)") and the other copy to the other virtual audio device.
• Run 2 copies of dl-fldigi.  Go to Configure --> Sound Card, and set one copy to listen to the first virtual audio cable and the other to the second
• When the Pi balloon is up and you start to see the signals, you should see 2 traces in the SDR waterfall.  Select one of them in one copy of the SDR program and the other in the other copy.
• You should now be seeing telemetry being decoded in each copy of dl-fldigi.  To check, if you look at the telemetry, the lower frequency (about 434.070MHz) has even sentence numbers and the other (434.074MHz) has odd sentence numbers.

Each channel will carry telemetry and SSDV packets.  There will be a telemetry packet roughly every 15 seconds, and alternate sentences go to alternate channels. So if you're watching one channel you should see a sentence every 30 seconds or so.  Between those you'll see SSDV packets which will look like garbage.  To view local images choose View --> SSDV in dl-fldigi.  Do this for both copies if you're listening to both channels.  So long as you're online all packets should get uploaded just like the telemetry.  You do not need to do anything special at all to decode SSDV - so long as the baud rate etc are correct then it'll take care of itself.

Hopefully it will be a nice long flight and we'll get lots of pretty pictures.  As with Anthony's flight it's (intended to be) a floater and we're not going to try and recover either unless they burst really early and plop down before they reach the North Sea.  If the floats happen then we'll need plenty of listeners in Holland, Germany and Poland.  Both flights should get quite high so listeners in Denmark for example should be able to help.  The Pi flight will have enough battery power  to keep running well into the night and some sunset photos would be great.  Beyond that the pictures will be pretty boring anyway!  Anthony's tracker should run for a lot longer.

Dave

[Steve Aerospace]

Thought I'd pop another one up on Saturday - while I'm out at Elsworth with Dave & Anthony. This is a re-test of the uXABEN uBlox MAX7 based tracker that appeared to lock up on XABEN46.

Details:
434.350MHz
470Hz shift
7N1 ASCII

Flight Docs already submitted.

Steve G8KHW

[mjc...@aol.com]

Oh matron ........

Thought I'd pop another one up on Saturday - while I'm out at Elsworth with Dave 
& Anthony.  This is a re-test of the uXABEN uBlox MAX7 based tracker that 
appeared to lock up on XABEN46. 

Details:
	434.350MHz
	470Hz shift
	7N1 ASCII

Flight Docs already submitted.

	Steve G8KHW

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[David Akerman]

I've added a short article (basically the info above but with pretty pix) to my blog:  http://www.daveakerman.com/?page_id=1039

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[David Akerman]

In case anyone has missed them, I've written up my PIE5 flight here - http://www.daveakerman.com/?p=1063

and Anthony has written his up here - http://ava.upuaut.net/?p=522

As I'm sure you know PIE5 and uXABEN are both lost in action, but AVA was recovered in an audacious operation by Radim's International Rescue team.

So well done to Radim and the guys for that, to all those who tracked these flights in some cases at enormous distances and some silly times of day.

Also thanks to the habhub guys for making sure the servers all coped which they did without (AFAIK) skipping a beat despite the extra attention I brought to the flights :p

And finally thanks again to Phil for the SSDV stuff

Dave

[Steve Aerospace]

Well done Dave & Anthony - amazing flights - they have certainly stoked up some interest in HABing.  I have got to say Radim and the STS guys have gone into my hero book.

I don't really consider the XABEN flight "lost" as I never reasonably expected to get it back (GPS was known dodgy) - who knows I may get it back yet. 

Steve 

Steve Randall

Random Engineering Ltd

st...@randomaerospace.com

+44 7802 242135