[McHUG] [K3PZN-List] Hamfest and PICetSAT Flight > New Web Page

[Kilroy, Patrick L. (GSFC-5680)]

... New CarrollSat-1 Web Page ...

See http://simsat.net/carrollsat/

Includes spreadsheets with plots of Temp
Codes and Light Codes from the received
telemetry by Steve Beckman, N3SB, in light
of all the spoken QRM around him at the
time.  Amazing!

More postings of results are being added
day by day to the page.

Gary, Rich & Steve -- thanks for the good
work and the good words!  Please send me
updates and corrections to the web page.

Please forgive my cross-posting, a little
seeding will go far.  ;-)

Cheers,

Pat
N8PK


Mr. Patrick L. Kilroy
Integration & Test Manager
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Building 5, Mail Code 568
Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
Phone: +1-301-286-1984
E-mail: Patrick.L.Kilroy at nasa.gov
Web: http://patkilroy.com/simsat/4/ (outreach)


-----Original Message-----
From: n3sb at qis.net
Sent: Sunday, October 25, 2009 8:56 PM
To: k3pzn-list at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [K3PZN-List] Hamfest and PICetSAT Flight

Hi Folks;

Fortunately we had good weather for the Mason-Dixon
Hamfest today.  I think the hamfest went well; thanks
to everyone who came out to help!

Our Technical Presentation today featured Pat N8PK
and Rich N3III, who talked about Amateur Radio High-
Altitude Balloons.  Pat discussed all the planning
activities his team of students have been working in
preparation for the SimSat-4 launch, now scheduled
for Saturday October 31.  Rich showed off several
versions of the PICetSat modules he'd built, and
handed out some parts kits to the attendees.

The presentation culminated in a PICetSat Balloon
launch.  The payload was a PICAXE-based module that
contained a temperature sensor (a thermistor) and
a light sensor.  The downlink transmitter was a
10 milliwatt garage door opener transmitter module,
operating near 433.920 MHz.

The PICetSAT balloon flight was a huge success!  We
were able to copy the telemetry using HTs and rubber
duck antennas for over an hour!  Using Rich's Arrow
antenna, we copied over two hours of telemetry from
the launch site at the Ag Center.  The balloon took
a Southern flight path away from the Ag Center,
and based on signal strength measurements with the
beam antenna, may have turned a bit to the [east].

When the telemetry downlink signal faded below our
ability to copy, the balloon appeared to still be
in flight, and was probably still climbing, with a
good battery.

This was a great demonstration, and its going to
be really hard to top this demo at next years'
hamfest.

I've included the received telemetry below.  You
should be able to import this info into your
spreadsheet and plot the data too see what
PICetSAT was doing during its flight.  If anyone
was able to copy additional data frames, please
pass them along.  Rich may be able to give us
some help with translating the temperature
telemetry data to temperature values - either
deg C or F.  It might also be interesting to
perform some Fourier analysis on the Light sensor
data to determine if there was a predominant
flight capsule rotation rate.

73; Steve, N3SB

[snip]
[See the telemetry data on the CarrollSat web
page in the spreadsheet files offered. -Ed.]