Long duration flight taking advantage of east to west 30km high altitude winds. Aiming for launch before 4/6/12.
Relatively easy launch from Lavenham, Suffolk - filled the balloon inside a barn allowing easy calculation of lift. In total had 500g of neck lift aiming for an ascent rate of 2m/s. Payload had a few last minute issues regarding powering up the radio thought to be related to the power switch, also we realised there was an error in the code which detected that we had passed -6.0 longitude to increased the radio power which needed to be fixed.
Launch was at 1603 with some gusts of wind requiring a running launch. It became clear that the radio/antenna wasn't working to full efficiency as the reception of the signal was very directional - this problem effected it through the whole flight. The problem was probably the use of 2 radials and being attached to the side of the payload container. The flight path was west as predicted however once it reached around 33km altitude it turned North and established a stable float at 34.5km. This was maintained overnight with very little altitude loss and the balloon travelled up over Manchester and then turned west over Liverpool. Sunrise was just south of the Isle of Man and it continued to travel North West making landfall over the south part of Northern Ireland. It was here that it passed -6.0 longitude and powered up to 100mW only to find that this killed the radio and no further telemetry was heard.
Many thanks to G0MJW and F6AGV for providing lots of data even at long range especially with the bad payload antenna.
Similar flight to Eurus 1 however to attempt to float at a lower altitude (25km) in an attempt to take advantage of the faster winds.
$$EURUS,61,09:51:32,512720368,10907357,36,6,3,6,565,-45,154,0,0*F16A
$$EURUS,Count,HH:MM:SS,Latitude,Longitude,Altitude,Sats,Lock,NavMode,Battery Voltage,ISS Az,ISS El,APRS Status,APRS_Attempts*CRC16
Code can be found here: Github Combo.ino
The payload is setup to calculate the Az and El of the ISS in relation to the balloon and if it is in view it will send APRS messages. The payload however will not be carrying a capable radio to communicate with the ISS, partially as this is a high risk launch testing the new valve but also the ISS has changed its packet system from 2m to 70cm which makes it harder to get a relay. We'll still test the flight code as it may come in useful in the future.
Also the radio will be reset every 50 strings as well as the GPS being 're-setup' to avoid any problems with the individual components reseting and losing their configs.