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), Konstantin Baibakov (USherbrooke), Karun Thanjavur (UVic), Cordell Grant and Houman Hakima (UTIAS-SFL).
Yorke and I did a second set of four tethered balloon drop tests this past Sunday (May 17) to again do a test of Yorke's new parafoil rigging scheme (and secondarily to check the operation of the SPOT Trace device, when taped onto the gondola and dropped with it) -- the first set being a week earlier (on May 9) described in http://projectaltair.org/HyperNews/get/general/86/1.html . To avoid the problem we had with the last one of the May 9 tests, where the parafoil caught on the tether line and sliced several of the parafoil's support strings (which, by the way, are now all fixed via splices), we used two very widely-spaced tethers , rather than a single tether, and this worked fine. This new set of drop tests were all very successful, with the parafoil opening fully on every one of the four drops. Videos (of each one of the four drops except for the first, in which I didn't get a video) can be found at https://particle.phys.uvic.ca/~jalbert/TetheredBalloonDropTests_17May2015/ . The likely reason for the success of the new drops, as compared with the May 9 drops (in which the parafoil only opened ~95% of the way) is due to the better folding of the parafoil within the gondola support rigging this time -- it appears to be quite important to have the parafoil folded the right way. Thus, we'll use Yorke's new rigging scheme, with the careful parafoil folding, for future drops and flights. The test of the SPOT Trace also went perfectly fine, with screenshots of the SPOT tracking service output from the day's tests in the two attached images at http://projectaltair.org/HyperNews/get/AUX/2015/05/26/04.15-86843-SPOTTracking17may15_1.png and http://projectaltair.org/HyperNews/get/AUX/2015/05/26/04.15-64758-SPOTTracking17may15_2.png .
Yorke thought that there might conceivably be an opportunity for a flight this Memorial Day weekend, but it ended up being far too windy. The next likely opportunity for a flight will be after Yorke's classes finish and he's done grading final exams (and then after a week vacation) which takes us to around the third week of June. I'll be back in Hanover around June 22 or so, so will be able to help again after I get back then. The plan for this first flight of 2015 will be to take telescope images of the source (and analyze them). We're greatly looking forward to this first free flight of the season!
At UVic, student Marlene Machemy is still working on recording a sufficient length of good data with the oscilloscope. The data we took on Monday May 4 turned out to correspond to only 25 microseconds of recording time, when we need to record at very least ~1/10 of a second. Marlene is working on correcting the oscilloscope data recording procedure.
Houman and Cordell are making a few additional updates to the LED mounting etc of the nanosat design. Houman has also essentially finished writing up the work up in his master's thesis, and will ask us additional questions if any come up.
We're looking forward to the JHU students' final writeup, which will be an excellent guide for our future work in implementing propulsion power for future gondolas, as well as many other areas. Finding new students will be a challenge for Susana and Nathan, as next year's senior engineering undergrads will want to work on something new, but they will work on that. And in the meantime we will have their writeup to help guide us.
That's all I remember, please send things that I forgot. Next telecon in 2 weeks, on Thursday, June 4 at 1:30 pm Eastern time.
cheers, thanks all! justin
On Wed, 20 May 2015 21:39:07 GMT, Justin Albert wrote: > Hi! > > Telecon tomorrow (May 21) at our usual time: 1:30 pm Eastern (10:30 am > Pacific, 19.30 European). Discussion items include: flight plans and our > successful drop tests this past Sunday, 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 plans, and a recap of our very successful drop tests on Sunday > 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 http://projectaltair.org/HyperNews/get/AUX/2015/05/26/04.15-86843-SPOTTracking17may15_1.png http://projectaltair.org/HyperNews/get/AUX/2015/05/26/04.15-64758-SPOTTracking17may15_2.png
