It's a good thing the launch was canceled because Mikaela's LCD for the cut down system stopped working after she transferred the circuit from the bread board to the proto board. She diagnosed the problem this week. I've been in Denver for the NCTM conference so I haven't talked to her yet. Hopefully she got it figured out.
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Well, the launch for April 13 was scrubbed. The winds were predicted to be around 20 mph and rains and thunderstorms were predicted. The actual weather outdid these predictions. The winds cranked up to around 40 mph and rain was on and off all day. It would have been a terrible day for a launch. So, we've pushed back the launch to May 18th. The weather should settle down by then.
 Here's the circuit diagram for the LED Flasher that we'll be using on the next launch. It uses a 555 timer in astable mode to flash high intensity LED's at about 4 Hz. This will be the first launch we use flashing lights and we are interested in seeing how this helps with locating the module both in flight and during recovery.
We're nearing the launch date. The weather is looking rather windy for the the morning of the launch so it seems iffy at this point. The university launched last weekend and the weather was perfect. I saw Dave at a baseball game that afternoon. So launch and recovery went perfectly.
I've been thinking about increased wind launches and how to get around the issue. What I've come up with so far is a smooth cloth or cargo net that can be used to hold the balloon and payload down. Then on count down it could be released. Or after count down it would be released when a break in the wind came about. This might make windy launches possible because balloon management would not be an issue. We performed a comm test today. Both tracking transmitters acquired gps and transmitted. Initially one had a low power level from the batteries so it simply emitted clicks. We also ran the video transmitter during the test to see if any interference would occur. We did not get any interference as expected. The trackers transmit at 144.39 MHz and the video transmitter operates at 2.3 GHz.
The structure team is busy building the payload module. It will have 3 cameras on board. One still and two video. I'm not sure of the orientation they'll have. They have one hole cut and will get the other two next class meeting.They are going for the box structure.
Helen is having trouble with the transmitter/receiver. She can not get the receiver to change channels. However it seems to be intermittent. Hopefully she will get it figured out and it won't be a problem.
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