Here are minutes of our meeting on Thursday -- please just reply with (or let me know) any corrections -- thanks!:
Attendees: Yorke Brown (Dartmouth), Karun Thanjavur (UVic), Susana Deustua (STScI), and Sri Krishna Uppaluri, Bobak Kiani, and fellow students (JHU). Apologies from Cordell Grant (UTIAS-SFL).
In Hanover, Yorke with students Cynthia and Maggie are continuing to prepare payloads for the summer flight campaign. They've finished the source mounting components, and the foam for the payloads, and are just starting to monitor future weather (it's raining there and there is still a foot of snow on the ground, but spring warmth is beginning, and the snow on the hills should perhaps start to clear up in a few weeks).
At UVic, student Nic Loewen figured out that an attenuation of the photodiode readout signal at frequencies above 10 kHz is due to the Hamamatsu amplifier box, and together with Paul Poffenberger and the electronics shop he is working on obtaining an amplifier that is capable of O(10x - 100x) amplification at higher frequencies (up to 100 kHz). We should be ready for a 10 km Mt. Tolmie to Observatory Hill test of that shortly. We also had our 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) -- and will test that out over the 10 km Mt. Tolmie to Observatory Hill path at the same time we do the optical tests.
We'll hear news from Houman and/or Cordell next telecon -- 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. Their aircraft and light source are now both working well in laboratory tests. 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, Apr. 9 at 1:30 pm Eastern time.
cheers, thanks all! justin
On Thu, 26 Mar 2015 01:08:16 GMT, Justin Albert wrote:
> Hi! > > Telecon tomorrow (Mar. 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 >
