Probable UKHASnet launch this weekend (21/22 May)

[James Coxon]

Hey all

Hoping to launch a UKHASnet node from East Anglia this weekend. I've put together a GPS enabled, temperature controlled node AJ2 which will be launched on a latex balloon (rather than pico). 

Due to the pattern of the winds the aim will be to float the balloon at around 30-35km and current predictions suggest that it'll drift east first then turn around and come back across the UK travelling west. This should give pretty good coverage of the UK and at a push across the sea towards the Netherlands so it would be great if any UKHASnet nodes could be brought online.

The node itself will be in repeater mode as well as transmitting its own packets every 30 seconds with GPS and other data. Previous tests and flights have had a mixture of results, the EMF launch allowed for 65km downlink range and recent tests on the IoW made a solid 2 way link over 18km however other flights haven't been successful. Hopefully the temperature control will stabilise the radio to stop it drifting too much (both on tx and rx) and the node will recalibrate its noise floor etc as well as reset the rx loop of the radio to stop it locking up (a previous issue). The more nodes that we can have online the better (it is even possible to setup an RTLSDR dongle as a UKHASnet gateway)

There will be a backup tracker providing a RTTY downlink on 434.300Mhz (Atlas) which will be uploaded to spacenear.us. This will be RTTY, ASCII 7, 425Hz shift and is an old pAVA R7 board with a RFM22 so be prepared for some drift.

Current plan is to launch around 1100 on Sat 21/05/16 though the window will be the whole weekend and launch will be from Preston St Mary, Suffolk.

Flight data will be on the UKHASnet map(https://ukhas.net/map), I've made a grafana page for the node (https://grafana.ukhas.net/dashboard/db/21-05-16-balloon-launch-aj2) and as always there will be discussions on #ukhasnet on freenode.

Thanks

James