Well I finally found a purpose for my dabbling in electronics and microprocessors. It is call amature high altitude ballooning (HAB). I'll explain more about HAB in a moment.
Years ago I would build little bots that followed lines on the floor and things like that. I didn't really ever have any direction in what to make the bots do. Then the bot building got put on hold due to many reasons. Now finally I am starting to have a little more time to think about having a hobby.
So what is this HAB? First of all it goes by a few different names. HAB is short and to the point. Amature HAB is basically sending a payload up to around 100,000 ft using a sounding balloon and then recovering the payload back on the ground. Sounds easy enough. Well not really. That is what makes it fun, well at least to me. This might be the reason why I still have 4 hours of the Mars rover "Spirit" decesnt to the surface of Mars stored on my DVR. It was amazing to listen to all the preprogrammed systems working perfectly together. There were all kinds of sensors and systems that worked on a landing "script." If one part of the sequence went wrong then it would crash.
Well the same can happen with the balloon and payload. The payload is a set of electronics that operate many things including sensors, real-time telemetry, cameras, radios, etc. Payloads can be anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars each.
Since I am still recovering from an expensive Christmas and an upcoming vacation, I am not expecting to get a balloon and payload launched until early 2009. I want to take my time an learn as much as I can about all the dynamics of this hobby. I would rather figure out how and why things work rather than just read it off a balloon club website as fact. That is not to say all the info in the various sites are worthless, many have been very helpful in giving me an understanding it was it takes to undertake this hobby. I just want to do it my own at first and then maybe later I will look into a club.
To start off my hobby I must collecting tools and resources to build my balloon. The first thing I am going to acquire is my HAM radio license. It is fairly easy to get one now that the FCC has done away with morris code on the test.
After the HAM license I will start to put together the design of the payload and number crunching to figure out what all I can get in the payload and stay under the 6lb FAA limit.
That's all for now.
Jason
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1 comment:
Jason, I can't wait for you to get this up. It's great you are finally getting to do something for you. This really sounds interesting and really fun. ^___^
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