Dave Akerman kindly offered to launch a MAX7C based board for testing last weekend. I prepared the PCB and posted it out to Dave who sent it up under a 1600g Hwoyee with a slowish ascent rate. The plan was for a float but the balloon unfortunately burst rather than entered into a float.
It did however make it to France (just) :
it appeared the parachute tangled badly and it “landed” in a field at 15.9m/s (44mph) :
The impact although significant (it broke the battery off the board and bent the ICSP connector in the process) the transmitter continued operating. F5APQ kindly located the payload in a frosty field very early the next morning still transmitting :
Jacques kindly untangled the mess and returned the payload to me back in the UK ready to fly again :
So a massive thanks to F5APQ to going out of his way to do that.
Technically the uBLOX MAX7C performed as expected with no blips, the APRS Geofence correctly identified when it crossed into France, shame the balloon didn’t float but a good result in the end!
0 Comments.