A little testing

Pacificon is October 15 and we are planning on a jump Saturday October 15.  We have some good stuff planned.

Michael Gregg is working on his helmet cam.  He ias a 1.2Ghz link to the ground.  Because we are not sure about ATV from Byron to to the Marriot in Santa Clara, he is working on inputing the NTSC signal into his computer and seeing if we can broadcast it via Justin.tv.  Otherwise we will record the video to disk and send the video after the jump.

Michael Pechner has 3 project going.  First is to finally see that the aprs data recorder really works.   Another is to get a APRS-IS gateway configured using Xastir.  Below 800ft, the local digipeaters are deaf at the Byron airport.

The third project is to learn how to do a live KML/google earth website.  Take the APRS packet and do a live update of a KML file people can see updated on refresh.

We are planning an official Parachute Mobile practice mission in the next couple of weeks.  But Michael Gregg wants to go jump tomorrow.  So he will carry a aprs station.  I’ll be trying hopefully 4 different antenna configurations to see which hears the most packets.

First will be a mag mount vertical.  The most basic setup. But the receive null is directly above.  Second will be a magmount at 90 degrees.  So the null is horizontal.  Third is a Elk 3 element Log Periodic pointed up. Last is using a T, have a 2 x 1/2wave 2M antennas.  One vertical and one at 90 degrees. I know this makes the impedance 25ohms. But it is just for receive and should work.  I don’t have a field strength meter.  So, success is strictly packet count. I’ll need 1 or 2 more visits since I want 2 jumps with each antenna configuration.

I’ll post data and pictures next week to showing what happens tomorrow.

Amazing Animation by Mathias Lachal

You can see more of Mathias’s animations on his blog

Chute (Fall) from Mathias Lachal on Vimeo.

Here is Mathias’s graduation film at Emile Cohl school, a skydive moment.