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Another 97,000 + ft Balloon with APM2 and 3Dradios

Posted by Earl on June 17, 2012 at 6:10pm

3689462910?profile=original3rd time for this APM2 and 3DR radio combo ! The temps ranged from 100 F on ground to -51 F at one point in flight.

We did have a failure on the 3DR radio at -51 F. Radio died and won't come back.

We used the APRS.FI tracking as well and it showed great.

As you can see, there is NO insulation in our fiberglass box. Cameras on outside have no insulation.

All electronics worked for 3 flights now and still work (except the 3DR)

Sparkfun datalogger worked this time. I need to DL the APM2 data yet.

Earl

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  • Prahas David Nafissian August 3, 2012 at 6:51am

    Hi Earl and Company!

    A few questions about your Ardu / balloon

    mission, as I plan ours.

    How are you going to program Ardu to get home 

    after you release it from your balloon?  Are you 

    using way points?  Or is "rtl" enough?

    Can you set the "home" point to be landing field,

    and have the start point be elsewhere?  (like 50k feet

    up?)  Obviously this is necessary.  If so, do you know

    how to do it?

    How are you planning to activate the Ardu.  In my

    vision, as the balloon carries it up, it is inactive.  Upon

    release from balloon, Ardu should activate and

    home in on the first waypoint.

    if you are using waypoints, will you be assigning

    altitudes to each (based on glide ratio of the plane,

    and wind)?  If so, how does Ardu react if alts are not met.

    For example, suppose you tell it to reach point H, which

    is at 10,000 ft.  Suppose plane is at 12k ft and starts gliding

    towards H.  Now suppose it descends faster than calculated,

    and hits 10k feet before reaching H.  What will Ardu do?

    How are you dealing with measuring the accuracy

    of the winds and modeling sites?  A major task is

    to calculate, based on current winds, the optimal

    release point (so that the glider is not fighting strong winds

    to reach the landing field).  You want to pick a release

    point such that glide ratio plus tail wind will allow the

    plane to reach the landing site with little effort.

    Then the problem becomes calculating a balloon launch

    point such that the balloon will drift to the optimal 

    release point.  Have you thought about this?  Do you

    have a sense of how accurate upper atmosphere winds

    sites are?  And balloon trajectory model sites?

    Any attention you can give to my many questions will

    be much appreciated!

    --Lt Nafissian

  • Earl June 28, 2012 at 9:04pm

    We are also considerinf the Raspberry Pi I got 6/26/12 for a future flight with a live web camera.

    What do you think ?

    Earl

  • Earl June 28, 2012 at 9:02pm

    We are going to launch another balloon on 7/2/12 at 16:00 UTC to 100,000 ft.

    Same APM2 and 3DR radios and APRS unit.

    Call sign is the same KE5VSH-1 and you may track it on APRS.Fi

    The prediction program says it is gonna land somewhere in Albuquerque city proper. We will see.

    Earl

  • Earl June 20, 2012 at 5:25pm

    yup, thats the one.

    Earl

  • Prahas David Nafissian June 20, 2012 at 1:08pm

    Hi Earl -- Is this the X8?  (Your version minus motor):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIg6u6zgcNc&list=PL036E49765D41E...  

    I too was thinking a fixed wing glider was the best design for

    high altitude...

    --Prahas

  • Jonas H. June 20, 2012 at 3:28am

    I do my launch with a selfmade flying wing. 2 keycam #16 onboard and the apm 2.0 and a gsm gps tracker. I let the apm control the all the flight.

  • Earl June 19, 2012 at 9:52pm

    The callsign for our balloon and glider flights is KE5VSH-1

    I will try to make announcements in the arduballoon section 2 days before flight.

    The glider we will use is an X8. No motor, not needed, with aprs onboard as well as the APM2 and 3dr 433mhz radios controlling the rc stuff with a joystick in mission planner via the mavlink connection. No rc rx installed...not needed. We will also have 5 watts of live video on 439.25 mhz. A tv set to cable channel 59 with a 12 element beam antenna to show FPV from glider. We plan to fly back from whatever altitude we get to. We will have a cut down circuit via mavelink..

    I gotta go now to get some sleep for school in am.

    Earl

  • Prahas David Nafissian June 19, 2012 at 6:40am

    Great work, guys!  My group is planning a 90k balloon launch, to release a glider with APM2.  A few questions:  1) what make/model glider are each of you using?  2) do you know what the current, in-place FAA regs are for such a flight?  The Small Unmanned Aircraft System Aviation Rulemaking Committee, in 2009, made recommendations (which might put our plans in the grey zone, possibly requiring a waiver), but I don't know which recommendations were actually passed into law.  Anyway -- I'll follow this thread.  I hope you all share APRS details, and other tidbits.  I certainly will!  --Prahas

  • Carl La France June 18, 2012 at 5:59pm

    Earl you mentioned you had a radio failure did you find the source ? The reason I mentioned condensation and frost is because I had a radio failure in a plane once in the winter It worked fine one day it was already cold  It got extremely cold that night  the next day it wouldn't fire up. when they disassembled it they figured condensation had formed on the circuit board from repeated heating and cooling and when it got extremely cold it froze and lifted the foil off the circuit board  breaking the contacts you might have had a chip freeze and split when it warms up the frost goes away leaving the damage and you trying to figure out why? You are doing interesting stuff  Have a good day Earl

  • Mike June 18, 2012 at 10:00am

    Please share APRS.FI call sign and launch schedules beforehand - like to follow upcoming missions in real time.

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