Here are minutes of our meeting on Thursday -- please just reply with (or let me know) any corrections -- thanks!:
Attendees: Just Yorke Brown (Dartmouth) and me this time.
ALTAIR survived the July 29 flight, and spending the week following that 20 meters up in a tree in rural Caanan, NH, quite well -- Yorke has given a thumbs up to the internal systems. I carefully repaired the parafoil with "Tenacious Tape" (https://www.mcnett.com/gearaid/tenacious-tape#10691), kite string, heat shrink tube, and needle & thread, and Yorke additionally ordered a new one from Sea Breeze Parachutes. Yorke has found and fixed the software issue that caused ALTAIR to go into its landed state while still up at 2000 meters (and thus activating the MURS beacon and disabling parafoil steering), and he has also found and fixed (via an update) a compiler bug in the "Great Cow BASIC" open source compiler he uses for the flight control soft/firmware.
Yorke would like the new parafoil to arrive before we do the next flight (the careful job I did repairing the old one notwithstanding -- we both think it would at least be a good idea to at least do a tethered balloon drop test of the repaired parafoil before sending it up to 4000 m). I have to return to Victoria today however -- the academic year approaches -- so the next flight will entirely be up to Yorke and colleagues. It would also be a very good idea to take some more standard star data (with dimmer standards and longer exposure times than the ones from a few weeks ago) just before the next flight, and also on a separate outing if possible, and it would also be good practice to do another pre-flight, long-range check of radio transmission (to Gile Mtn. or Mt. Ascutney).
Thanks very much to Cordell for posting the relevant sections of Houman's master's thesis -- that information will be extremely useful to us going forward. Also, Susana and Nathan, it would be very helpful for us to get the JHU students' final writeup when you have a chance.
Apurv (MITACS Globalink summer student) and have done some more motor & propeller tests -- and we have now shipped that equipment back to Victoria to resume that there, and have ordered some electronic components (temperature and RPM sensors, H-bridges, microcontrollers, etc) for the control of that future subsystem.
There are several grant program due dates approaching, and a list of the ALTAIR-relevant ones is attached.
That's all I remember, please send things that I forgot. Next telecon in 2 weeks, on Thursday, Aug. 27 at 1:30 pm Eastern time.
cheers, thanks all! justin
On Wed, 12 Aug 2015 22:05:26 GMT, Justin Albert wrote:
> Hi! > > Telecon tomorrow (Aug. 13) at our usual time: 1:30 pm Eastern (10:30 am > Pacific, 19.30 European). Discussion items include: flight plans, > including progress on recovery from our flight 2 weeks ago, recent > calibration and observation tests, 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. > > 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) Recent calibration and observation tests in Hanover > III) Diffused light source and its modelling, pre- and post-flight calibration, and goniometric calibrations > IV) Nanosat solid models, and Houman's thesis > 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
http://projectaltair.org/HyperNews/get/AUX/2015/08/18/08.29-60788-ionDeadlines_Fall2015.pdf