Here are minutes of our meeting on Thursday -- please just reply with (or let me know) any corrections -- thanks!:
Attendees: Yorke Brown (Dartmouth), Arnold Gaertner (NRC), Karun Thanjavur (UVic), Houman Hakima (UTIAS-SFL), Susana Deustua (STScI), and Sri Krishna Uppaluri, Bobak Kiani, and fellow students (JHU). Apologies: Cordell Grant (UTIAS-SFL)
Yorke, Cynthia, and new Dartmouth student Maggie continue to make progress in Hanover in preparing the payloads for our late spring / summer flight campaign. They've finished the source mounting components and are working on foam configuration for the payloads.
Here at UVic, student Nic Loewen has tested out the new 100 kHz photodiode readout for atmospheric scintillation tests in the lab, and we should be ready for a rooftop test (and then a 10 km Mt. Tolmie to Observatory Hill test) of that very shortly. Nic, together with electronic shop staff member Nick here, have also completed the test boards for the 144 MHz 500 mW Radiometrix transceivers (photos at http://projectaltair.org/HyperNews/get/AUX/2015/03/02/21.27-45306-144MHzBoards1.jpg and http://projectaltair.org/HyperNews/get/AUX/2015/03/02/21.27-63467-144MHzBoards2.jpg), and we'll be testing the usable range of those (backup) radio transceivers outdoors shortly as well.
Houman is making some additional updates to the LED light sources (supplementary to the laser diode light sources) in the optical light source in his very beautiful solid model design for the nanosat, and has essentially completed writing up the work up in his master's thesis. I've seen it and it looks excellent and beautiful to me -- Houman and Cordell will be sending and posting more info and pictures of it soon.
Our JHU colleagues are making excellent progress with their return-to-home model aircraft balloon payload. They are interested in visiting Yorke up in NH on some convenient weekend in the next couple months. They are continuing to do very useful tests below the 400 ft altitude limit. FAA approval has not been received quite yet for above-400 ft testing; hopefully that will come soon, and in the meantime they are proceeding with very useful low altitude flights as well as laboratory work of course. They will send a video when they have a nice new one to share.
That's all I remember, please send things that I forgot. Next telecon in 2 weeks, on Thursday, Mar. 12 at 1:30 pm Eastern time.
cheers, thanks all! justin
On Thu, 26 Feb 2015 04:56:51 GMT, Justin Albert wrote:
> Hi! > > Telecon tomorrow (Feb. 26) at our usual time: 1:30 pm Eastern (10:30 am > Pacific, 19.30 European). Discussion items include: flight planning, > light sources and light source modelling, goniometric and pre- and > post-flight calibration, communications tests, new nanosat bus and > payload solid models from Houman, JHU progress, computing/website, grant > applications, and recap of schedules. A reminder of the CSA project > timeline is attached. > > Here's how to connect: > 1) Open Skype on your computer (note that of course, you should first install Skype, http://www.skype.com , on your machine if you haven't already). > 2) In the "Contacts" menu, add me ( jalbertuvic ) as a contact, if you haven't already. > 3) Just wait for me to Skype-call you at the usual time (1:30 pm Eastern, 10:30 am Pacific). > 4) If there is any trouble, or if you don't get a call for some reason and would like to join, just send me an e-mail (jalbert@uvic.ca). > > Here's the tentative agenda: > I) Flight planning > II) New diffused light source and its modelling, pre- and post-flight calibration, and goniometric calibrations > III) Communications tests (possible backup optical and radio, etc) > IV) New nanosat solid models from Houman and Cordell > V) Progress at JHU / STScI > VI) Computing/website > VII) Grant applications > VIII) AOB > > Talk to you all tomorrow, thanks! > justin > > Attachments: > http://projectaltair.org/HyperNews/get/AUX/2012/11/12/18.02-43361-Schedule-20120702_hqp.pdf >
