The car PC installation was very useful for the balloon chase last weekend, but it would have been a lot better with a display closer to the driver’s line-of-sight. I knew that having the monitor buried down at the bottom of the dash wasn’t ideal, so I always expected to […]
Read MoreLight Support
My first flight had a miniature Buzz Lightyear “Commander” on board. Now I’m going to step that up and fly a much larger Buzz within view of one of the onboard cameras to photograph Buzz “flying” in space. To do this I needed to make a lightweight yet rigid support […]
Read MoreFoiled Once Not Twice (or Tree Times)
With the jet stream spoiling my plans for a latex balloon launch, I decided to try a foil balloon flight instead. Latex balloons stretch with altitude, eventually bursting at roughly 100 times their volume at ground level, and typically at altitudes of 30km or more. Foil balloons however do not […]
Read MoreCar PC Tracking Software
I’ve added a new page to the technical section, showing the car PC software I will use on the next launch.
Read MoreCloud4 Payload Build
This is the build of my latest photographic payload carrying, as usual, a Canon compact camera and a Kodak HD Video Camera. At less than 700g it’s my lightest yet with this configuration. The tracker has UHF telemetry as usual, plus an SMS backup. To help get the weight down, […]
Read MoreAn Egg Is Laid
This is the build of my smallest and lightest payload yet, using the tracker that I made recently. First job was to solder 3 Lithium Energizer AAA cells together and strap them to the tracker: I deliberately placed the cells next to the radio transmitter, and put some hot-melt glue […]
Read MoreTechie Section
I’ve added some a technical section to the site to help those who are building their own payload, or are simply interested in how it all works. See the new menu options above. Here’s the latest page: SMS Gateway
Read MoreEven Tinier Tracker
By far the largest and heaviest component on my previous tracker was the FSA03 GPS receiver, and most of that was the Sarantel antenna. That antenna is amazingly good (it picks up a signal on my desk where there’s very little direct view of the sky), but it is heavy. […]
Read MoreTracker Build
Here’s a photographic step-by-step showing the build of a small, lightweight (16g) tracker from off-the-shelf modules. First, the modules, from left to right the BMP085 pressure and temperature sensor, Arduino Mini Pro 3.3V 8MHz, RFM22B radio transceiver, and a Falcom FSA03 GPS receiver: First step was to solder on wires […]
Read MoreThe Waves Are Pounding On The Sand Tonight
Here’s an estimate, taken from the telemetry received from both payloads, of the final flight and then float of Cloud3. It managed to get about 1.8km out to sea before turning round and heading towards land, splashing down 500m or so out.
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