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Product COM-10594 | last year

These are Free?

News - AVC 2011!!! | about a year ago

Midair collisions? Similar problem ground vehicles will have to face and be programmed to avoid in order to win with other vehicles present. As for spectators underneath – light weight falling parts aren’t nearly as dangerous as a powered flying aircraft.
It’s always a good idea to make spectators aware of the dangers present whenever model aircraft are flown, but with multiple autonomous aircraft competing at the same time they should perhaps also be advised to TAKE COVER. (lol)
By the way, I’m certainly not suggesting to have multiple aircraft compete at the same time – just saying that it would be possible and that dealing with the Midair problem would be similar to the extra problem multiple ground vehicles will also have to deal with.

News - AVC 2011!!! | about a year ago

Why can’t you do multiple planes at once? Wouldn’t be much different then multiple ground vehicles.

News - Happy Free Day | about a year ago

What a waste of time, entirely unfun and earned you guys absolutely no goodwill. Couldn’t even get a response from the web site until it was all over. I’m not complaining about getting no free money, but think you could find a much better way to give something back to those that suport you and doesn’t waste everyone’s time (except for a very few).

News - Sending a Balloon Into Ne… | about a year ago

I would also like to know what kind of antennas were used for the XTend modems and if there was any problem maintaining a solid data connection through out the flight.
We track our HAB packages via amateur radio APRS transmissions every 30-60 sec’s, but have some scientific payloads planned that we would like to receive a constant data stream from and plan to also use the same XTend modems, but it’s always nice to learn and build upon what others have already done and learned rather then possibly trying things others have already found to not work.

News - Sending a Balloon Into Ne… | about a year ago

Easiest way to visualise the data in Google Earth is to use amateur radio APRS like most HAB groups do to track payloads. APRS i-gate stations feed all APRS data to the internet and you simply need to go to http://aprs.fi/, enter the callsign assigned to your tracker to track it’s position on the map on that page and then click on the Google Earth KML link to view the data in 3D using Google Earth.
If not a licensed amateur already, getting a license is quite easy or you can simply get a licensed amateur to help with your launch. And for a tracker, I doubt there’s anything simplier then the RTrack-HAB that Jason at RPCElectronics mentioned earlier and will have available shortly. It’s a complete tracker with a Trimble GPS made for operation above the 60K ft ITAR limit most receivers are programmed to stop operating at. (Many receivers actually stop operating at much lower altitudes, like 10-20K ft.)

Tutorial - HAB - Lessons Learned | about 2 years ago

Some friends and myself have been having HAB launches for a number of years (http://bear.sbszoo.com/) and each flight is a great adventure and more fun then the last. Most importent is to leave nothing to chance (as there’s no way to fix a mistake once a balloon is released) and to run predictions before launching to know where the balloon will go and if one should perhapes launch a different day to save having to drive further then one wants or perhapes landing in a hard to reach area or where large bodies of water are present. As for tracking payloads, amateur radio APRS makes locating payloads the easiest and the RTrak-HAB tracker others mentioned is an excellent ready to use tracker for those not wanting to build something from scratch. Thanks Nathan for an excellent tutorial. I get numerous enquires from others wanting info on how to launch their own payloads and I now have a single place to direct them to that includes links to all the other main sites with additional information.

News - Fun with Balloons | about 3 years ago

Balloons are regularily launched by many groups. Check http://www.arhab.org/ for future launches and follow along at home in real time using APRS. Great fun, but do your reasearch and leave nothing to chance, such as what gps to use. Most have an altitude limit and stop working at, or before, 65K ft so a list of those known to work is kept at http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/GPSrcvrsvs60kft.htm . And for a page with photo’s to 117,597ft, see http://bear.sbszoo.com/sable/sable3.htm