[UKHAS] Flight Announcements - Elsworth launch fest Sunday 5th May

[Steve Aerospace]

In somewhat of a launch fest there are a few flights planned from Elsworth Cambridgeshire this coming Sunday:-

 

* A flight by Imperial College SEDS - on 434.650MHz - I have no more detail on this but it doesn't sound like it will be de-codeable by fl-digi - so I'm mainly posting to stop any frequency use conflicts.

* A flight by Dom & Chris - $$CHEAPO 7N2 50Baud 434.400MHz

* A flight by myself - Callsign XABEN on 434.3MHz 7N1 50 baud.

Its an EARS rocket day too - so feel free to drop by and watch/help/heckle - I plan to be there form 12:00.

More details and flight docs to come.

Steve G8KHW

[Steve Aerospace]

In a change of plan I'm now going to be launching XABEN-49 tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon and then the other flights Sunday.  I may also launch again on Sunday (which would then be XABEN-50).  Sundays flights (callsigns, frequencies etc) remain the same. 

Details for tomorrow:

434.250MHz
Callsign: XABEN1
600Hz shift, 50baud, 7N1 ASCII

Listeners for both days will of course be most welcome.

Flight docs to come.

Steve G8KHW

Steve Randall

Random Engineering Ltd

st...@randomaerospace.com

+44 7802 242135

[Steve Aerospace]

Hi All

The winds have changed overnight - the predicted landing spot for the flight today is now too close for comfort to Stanstead Airport - so I'm moving the XABEN-49 flight back to Sunday (XABEN-50 is scratched for the moment).

Steve

[Steve Aerospace]

Hi Folks - A brief report on the flights yesterday.

It was a cracking day - sun bursting through the clouds on and off - I even managed to get a sun tan.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/habhome/8714319724/in/photostream/lightbox/

The EARS rocket club were launching rockets in the next field, which while interesting meant we had to dodge a couple of rockets landing nearby (one ballistically).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/habhome/8714321072/in/photostream/lightbox/

Cheapo was the first flight to be ready - the wind had picked up so we used the "Hail Mary" launch technique.

The Imperial College team had 2 payloads - one was just a mobile phone in a polystyrene sleeve.  The other was an Arduino based tracker using NTX2.  Did anyone hear this flight?

The wind had dropped and the IC team used the more usual pay the line out "Forrest" (run like the wind) method.

Unfortunately the IC team lost contact with the NTX2 shortly after launch - and I'm not sure they got the phone back either.

In any event from the chuckles & laughter I could tell they had a really great time.

XABEN was the last to launch.

XABEN49

-------------

Prior to the flight I'd been running the predictions to see the expected landing area - I noticed that for the launch window we had very little choice of landing spot by either varying launch time or balloon (burst height) - the flight was going to land in the Fens. On the plus side the Fens have few tall trees and lots of open land - the downside is they have lots of drainage ditches.  Because I knew it was going to be the fens I had been obsessing how the flight might land in water - little did I know just how close to that it would come.  

We had managed to get in position at the predicted landing spot just south of a drainage ditch - and as the payload descended we could see the path was tracking along the ditch.  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/habhome/8713202751/in/photostream/lightbox/

When we spotted the payload and chute I was convinced it was going to land in the water - then just in the last few feet it seemed to grab a gust of wind that took it to the far bank. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/habhome/8714323878/in/photostream/lightbox/

After that recovery was a doddle - just a few yards up a track between the field and the drain.

The stills and footage from the flight will be used for a promotion in the Mirror newspaper at the end of the week. 

Many thanks to those that helped track.

Steve G8KHW

On 5 May 2013, at 21:14, Geoff Mather <geoff....@gmail.com> wrote:

For those who like them the Object movies are at;
http://360.g8dhe.net/hab_flights/XABEN49/XABEN49.html
http://360.g8dhe.net/hab_flights/CHEAPO/CHEAPO20130505.html
whilst all the Pano's are at http://360.g8dhe.net/default.php?HAB

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[Anthony Stirk]

Hey Steve,

I heard a repetitive  tone at about 1hz just above 434.650Mhz in the direction of Elsworth which I assume was the IC launch. Just sounded like the NTX2 being turned off and on no data.

Cheers,

Anthony

[Steve Aerospace]

Thanks Anthony - I relayed that & got a message back that said: "Yes that was probably it, sadly still no word"

I'm sort of convinced that it must have landed near XABEN and CHEAPO - conditions were such most flights were going to end up near the same landing spot. 

Steve