Launch Announcement - 2/3 March - Hyperion/Habanero from RevSpace @ the Hague, Netherlands

[Costyn van Dongen]

Hi all,

Tentative launch announcement for 1 balloon with 2 payloads from the
Hague in the Netherlands, at our hackerspace RevSpace on Saturday
(March 2nd) or Sunday (March 3rd).

Predictions are looking good at the moment, but may change.

Payload details:
Hyperion using an NTX2 at 10mW:
434.650 MHz
425 shift
50 baud 8n1
Canon A480 taking pics (hopefully throughout the flight this time)

Habanero (small 90g payload) using an RFM22b
434.250 MHz
460 shift
100 baud 8n1

Balloon is a 1200g Hwoyee. Calculated altitude should be around 35KM
for the payload weight.

We will stream video from the launch site and perhaps during the chase
using ustream. More details on that later.

I have been in contact with Matthew Brejza about his launch and will
work out any conflicts in frequencies.

As always, listeners are appreciated!

Kind regards,

Costyn.

[Costyn van Dongen]

Hello,

Just to confirm we're going ahead to launch on saturday morning (March
2nd), 10:00 UTC.

Livestream from the launchsite and during recovery will be here:
http://ustre.am/SMza

I've been in touch with Project BLAST which will be delaying their
launch on saturday a bit so our frequencies don't interfere.

Kind regards

Costyn.

[Costyn van Dongen]

Hello everyone,

Glad to report our flight went really well. Launch, flight, landing
and recovery went very easy. We (again) saw the payload come down
under it's parachute, thanks to the excellent predictor on the site.
It's really amazing how well it works. Thank you to those who made it.
:)

There was some issues with receiving Hyperion, not sure what was the
issue, fortunately there were 2 trackers, and Habanero was loud and
clear for everyone, even though I had programmed the radio to be reset
every 50 strings (sorry if this caused some confusion, it was a last
minute thing).

Some pictures from the flight (the camera took 1200 pictures) can be
seen here: http://imgur.com/a/8JY4w#12

I also have 15GB of HD footage from the GoPro camera which I will make
2 versions, the whole thing and one with the launch and burst
highlights (unfortunately the battery cut out at about 5KM on the way
down).

Attached is the pie chart from habhub showing number of decoded
strings per listener. Thanks to those that tracked and I hope you
enjoyed the livestream during launch and recovery.

And thanks to Geoff for making interesting views in Google Earth.

Cheers

Costyn.

[Costyn van Dongen]

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to tell you about 2 videos from my launch:

First, I put together a quick video with the highlights of the flight.
http://youtu.be/AKNbJCVRXhA?t=45s

Be sure to have your sound on, for at 5:00 and 6:15 you can hear (and
see) 2 planes coming fairly close by. We've determined the first one
was probably a Polish Airlines flight from Warsaw to London Gatwick.

The GoPro that was onboard with the standard lipo battery lasted about
2 hours, so on the way down it stopped recording, no footage of the
landing unfortunately.


Secondly, Darren from tech (web) tv show Hak5 was onsite during the
launch and made a nice item of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anmVE6QzZHc

Highlights of the launch are at 17:00 with the actual launch and 25:00
with the recovery (if you're pressed for time).

I'm the guy in the orange/black jacket, busy doing everything. Jeroen
does most of the talking in the first bit of the video, explaining
dl-fldigi, SDR and all the other bits.

Hope you enjoy them.

Cheers

Costyn.