Happy 4th of July weekend, as well as Canada Day this past week. Here are minutes of our meeting on Thursday -- please just reply with (or let me know) any corrections -- thanks!:
Attendees: Yorke Brown (Dartmouth), Cordell Grant (UTIAS-SFL), and (intermittently!) Karun Thanjavur (UVic). Regrets from Susana Deustua (STScI) and Arnold Gaertner (NRC).
We continue on our road toward flights here in Hanover, where Yorke is busy both fixing and updating his flight control and telemetry software. UVic student (and very soon to be UBC grad student) Marlene Machemy arrived Thursday evening, and will be here until the 13th. Marlene and I attempted to do some standard star observations with the 6" portable telescope on Friday evening, to calibrate / cross-check the combined throughput of the telescope and the sensitivity of the SBIG camera, however during star alignment the elevation adjustment froze solid on the telescope mount for some reason (and was unresponsive to power cycles), thus we were unable to make observations. We will try again with the 12" telescope (as well as the 6", if we can unstick the alt control on its mount) on the next clear night here. Marlene is also working on analytically and numerically calculating the relative effects of beam-wandering and beam-spreading for future optical communication, as well as producing procedure manuals both for the next flight and for standard star observations (as well as rock climbing at Rumney in her spare time!). Additionally we'll do another pre-flight, long-range check of radio transmission (to Gile Mtn. or Mt. Ascutney) when Yorke is ready for that.
Cordell mentions that Houman will send the latest design for the baffle and LED mounting, and his master's thesis itself, as soon as he gets a chance.
The projectaltair.org website may be moving to a new physical computer host in a few weeks, in the process of fixing its issues such as file upload problems. In the best of all worlds, such a move should be invisible to anyone using or accessing the site, however my guess is it is unlikely we'd be in that corner of the multiverse. I'll work on keeping people updated in any case. We also are starting to test some low-cost equipment for starting to test out having a bit of propulsion on the gondolas, which is largely a topic for after we start to get some science, but still fun to experiment with on off-hours.
That's all I remember, please send things that I forgot. Next telecon in 2 weeks, on Thursday, July 16 at 1:30 pm Eastern time.
cheers, thanks all! justin
On Wed, 01 Jul 2015 21:32:19 GMT, Justin Albert wrote:
> Hi! > > Happy Canada Day! Telecon tomorrow (July 2) 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, 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 > II) Diffused light source and its modelling, pre- and post-flight calibration, and goniometric calibrations > III) Communications tests (possible backup optical and radio, etc) > IV) Nanosat solid models from Houman and Cordell > V) Computing/website > VI) Grant applications > VII) 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 >