Here are minutes of our meeting on Thursday -- please just reply with (or let me know) any corrections -- thanks!:
Attendees: Houman Hakima (UTIAS-SFL), and Sri Krishna Uppaluri, Bobak Kiani, and fellow students (JHU). Apologies from Konstantin Baibakov (Sherbrooke) and Susana Deustua (STScI).
In Hanover, Yorke just got wrapped up in work and accidentally missed the meeting, but I talked with him the night before, and things are going well: he, Cynthia, and Maggie continue to make progress in preparing the payloads for our late spring / summer flight campaign. They've finished the source mounting components, and are now finishing up the foam for the payloads.
At UVic, student Nic Loewen has tested out the new 100 kHz photodiode readout for atmospheric scintillation tests both in the lab and between the Elliott and Bob Wright building rooftops here on campus, and we should be ready for a 10 km Mt. Tolmie to Observatory Hill test of that shortly. We've had some issues with readout sensitivity and noise at the frequency range between 1 and 100 kHz which we need to measure, but Nic believes those issues are now worked out. We also had a very successful test of 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) between campus and the top of Mt. Tolmie -- 3 km, and very promisingly a bit outside line of sight viewing (obscured by the top of the hill). Data transmission was clear and error-free even when outside line of sight at this range, when both antennas were up and pointed vertically. Next to do will be a test of those (as well as the aforementioned optical transmission) at the 10 km (but line of sight) Mt. Tolmie to Observatory Hill path.
Houman is making some small additional updates to his solid model design for the nanosat, and has essentially completed writing up the work up in his master's thesis. Houman and Cordell will be sending and posting more info and pictures of it soon, and will ask us any additional questions if any come up.
Our JHU colleagues continue to make excellent progress with their return-to-home model aircraft balloon payload. They will soon be doing some further test flights 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. 26 at 1:30 pm Eastern time.
cheers, thanks all! justin
On Thu, 12 Mar 2015 01:03:34 GMT, Justin Albert wrote:
> Hi! > > Telecon tomorrow (Mar. 12) at our usual time: 1:30 pm Eastern (10:30 am > Pacific, 19.30 European). Discussion items include: flight plans, 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 >
