What have I learnt from launching SAT1?
1. Don't take your two and a half year old and 3 month old with you in the chase car, when you could be driving for 5 hours straight.
2. Make sure if you do a time lapse video of the launch set up that you actually have the camera on time lapse and not just multi-frame shots. And only end up with shots of your own stupid head looking to see if the camera is working.
3. If you loose the signal of your balloon stop and try to get it again straight away or head in the direction it was last travelling and try to get the signal again as soon as possible.
4. Set up a ground station with a really good aerial to have an alternate to the chase car.
5. Only launch in the morning, to give yourself plenty of time to retrieve your payload.
6. If you can't afford to replace what you put in the package then don't put it in there (eg. 2 x Go Pro Cameras), at least until you have done a few releases and recoveries of your package.
7. If you get the .kml file of your flight from http://spacenear.us/tracker/ then take a screen shot of it and write down as much data as possible as this is a live link and will disappear once your package's trail is wiped from the website.
8. Don't trust the predictions.
9. Don't give up, things that are worthwhile are never easy. Especially if you have no electronics or programming knowledge to start with.
Below is an image of my flight, up until we lost contact. The last sentence was as follows
altitude: 9908, time: 07:15:16, _sentence:
$$SAT1,154,07:15:16,-32.4875,148.6090,9908,108,10*4E5B
1. Don't take your two and a half year old and 3 month old with you in the chase car, when you could be driving for 5 hours straight.
2. Make sure if you do a time lapse video of the launch set up that you actually have the camera on time lapse and not just multi-frame shots. And only end up with shots of your own stupid head looking to see if the camera is working.
3. If you loose the signal of your balloon stop and try to get it again straight away or head in the direction it was last travelling and try to get the signal again as soon as possible.
4. Set up a ground station with a really good aerial to have an alternate to the chase car.
5. Only launch in the morning, to give yourself plenty of time to retrieve your payload.
6. If you can't afford to replace what you put in the package then don't put it in there (eg. 2 x Go Pro Cameras), at least until you have done a few releases and recoveries of your package.
7. If you get the .kml file of your flight from http://spacenear.us/tracker/ then take a screen shot of it and write down as much data as possible as this is a live link and will disappear once your package's trail is wiped from the website.
8. Don't trust the predictions.
9. Don't give up, things that are worthwhile are never easy. Especially if you have no electronics or programming knowledge to start with.
Below is an image of my flight, up until we lost contact. The last sentence was as follows
altitude: 9908, time: 07:15:16, _sentence:
$$SAT1,154,07:15:16,-32.4875,148.6090,9908,108,10*4E5B