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), Cordell Grant and Houman Hakima (UTIAS-SFL), and Susana Deustua (STScI).
Yorke, with students Cynthia and Maggie, are busy preparing for initial flight tests this year, with the goal being by the second full week in May -- likely involving both a tethered drop test, and then a first free flight. Snow is still on the ground there in the hills in Hanover, but it is starting to warm up dramatically this week so the snow should be gone fairly soon. (I'll be out there May 6 - 18 and will help with any flights etc.)
Here at UVic, students Nic Loewen and Marlene Machemy are still working on fixing the attenuation of the photodiode readout signal at frequencies above 50 kHz with the new amplifier (the standard Hamamatsu amplifier conks out above 1 kHz, the new one from the electronics shop gets to about 50 kHz, but we're seeing if we can modify it to work up to 100 kHz) with the electronics shop. When they've got that fixed, we should be ready for a 10 km Mt. Tolmie to Observatory Hill test. We also should be able to test out 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) over the 10 km Mt. Tolmie to Observatory Hill path at the same time we do the optical tests.
Houman has now completed some additional updates to his solid model design for the nanosat, involving mounting of the LED additional sources to the integrating sphere, and has also essentially completed writing up the work up in his master's thesis. Houman has sent his new drawings to me, and I think they look great. He and Cordell will be posting more info and pictures of it soon, and will ask us any additional questions if any come up.
Susana reports that the JHU group has tested their telemetry and achieved a range of 6 miles, which is an excellent start, and could be boosted even further with improved antennas and/or signal amplification. Their aircraft and light source are 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 will proceed 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. 23 at 1:30 pm Eastern time.
cheers, thanks all! justin
On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 01:19:41 GMT, Justin Albert wrote:
> Hi! > > Telecon tomorrow (Apr. 9) 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, 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 >
