Buggy,
Put simply you were perfect. You were my girl, and before now I couldn’t imagine not coming home to your happy heart. You brought everyone around you endless joy. I’m so sorry it ended like this, but take solace in the knowledge that we were able to give you a happy home for a few wonderful years. I will miss you. I love you.
Launch happened the morning of Saturday, June 1st. We had three launches spaced out during the morning and early afternoon hours from Moses Lake, WA. We were successful in recovering two of the payload strings, and received good data from all three.
Flight 1 launched at shortly before 7:30AM PST and carried an experimental platform, and a backup APRS tracker based on my IRIS transmitter board. It reached a max altitude of approximately 105,000′. It was recovered by our recovery team after getting a final GPS position at only 4,000′ in altitude.
Flight 2 launched at shortly before 12:30PM PST and carried student payloads, a video telemetry system, an audio based telemetry system, digital telemetry, and a backup APRS tracker. It reached a max altitude of approximately 100,000′. It was recovered by our recovery team after getting a final GPS position at only 2,700′ in altitude.
Flight 3 launched at shortly before 2:45PM PST and carried student payloads, a video telemetry system, an audio based telemetry system, digital telemetry, and a backup APRS tracker. Shortly after launch we experienced issues with the GPS units attached to several of our systems and have limited data on positions and altitude. This payload string was not recovered as the final position we were able to acquire was at approximately 25,000′ and provided for significant drifting.
I recently purchased a number of uBlox Max6Q GPS modules from HAB Supplies and etched some boards to attach them and the supporting components to. Rather then testing each one individually, waiting for it to lock, etc. I stuck all six of them on a breadboard at the same time and let them run till they all locked. It ended up being pretty cool when all six modules locked and got their PPS (Pulse Per Second) outputs synchronized.
I’m going to be flying one of my transmitters soon on a weather balloon, so I wanted to make sure it would work properly at the cold temperatures normally experienced there. So I went over to the local Fred Meyer and grabbed a block of dry ice. I stuck the block and my transmitter in a cooler overnight, and watched the data roll in.
Looks like the onboard temperature sensor got down to about -50C and the board ran quite happily. Looks like I’ll be good to go for the flight.
Here’s a photo of it covered in a bit of frost right after I took it out of the cooler.
A little bit ago the gal and I went on a short hike in the area. The place we went is called Federation Forest, and here’s a few pictures I took out there.
