[McHUG] Checkpoint for Timonium

[Peter Morton]

Rich-

It looks like you've bitten off a lot to chew over the next 17 days.  I 
suspect you will experience a number of sleepless nights.

The first thing I am wondering about is what is the goal for the Hamfest? 
Just to transmit across the room and demo the shields?  Or, do you want to 
launch a balloon, too?

The SparkFun receiver is good to only 500 feet or so.  If you use antennas 
with an additional 12 dB of gain, you've only increased the range by a 
factor of 4 or to 2000 feet.  I'm not sure, with the limited reading I've 
done, that these receiver-transmitter combinations will work over the ranges 
anticipated for a balloon-launch application.

I haven't done any programming in the past 14 to 15 months or so.  And, at 
my age, I forget things faster than I learn.  But, I'd be glad to try to get 
the ol' brain working again.  Let me know.

For a balloon launch, I would suggest using my FT897 (can operate using a 
car battery or the UPS battery I bought from Chuck) in AM mode and passing 
the audio to a PC for recording,  and decode simultaneously using your 
Arduio system.  You can play back later from the PC if you have any missing 
data.

One of these days, I'm going to build a board with a GPS module on it.

-Pete, W3GVX

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rich Mitchell" <geobra at att.net>
To: "MicroController Ham User Group - Physical Computing for HamRadio" 
<mchug at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 11:11 AM
Subject: Re: [McHUG] Checkpoint for Timonium

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