Need opinion on next purchase……

[Bruce R. Schaefer]

You guys are on the right track. Sorry, Mule, the last ARRL book I have is from 1999. Hey, who thought we’d all still be here! Ha! I know that I want to get into tracking as I switch to high altitude shots. Right now, I just want to have fun and help others out. At some launches, not NCR–yet, you have to state your frequencies LONG before you go. A frequency board sounds good. I donated some white-board pens to the club a while back… hopefully someone has them. ❓

[AdrianParticipant]

Jason,
Thanks. I’ll be Tx-ing in the 4xx range, so we won’t cross signals Laughing
Have you ever found out which band has better signal up there?

So was that you doing the L2 on the 1st? I’m trying to put faces w/ names. I was doing the L1 w/ the blue rocket when you (if it was you) had tracking problems and aborted that first one.

I’m going to start a thread in the electronics area for this, I have some questions for you.

Greg

No, that was me. I think my Beeline’s antenna got folded over by the chute or something cuz’ once I re-packed the chute, it was fine. Sorry I don’t remember your bird. Pre-launch tunnel vision on my part. I’ll see you at MHM, though.

[Bruce R. Schaefer]

That’s right. I and Joe Hinton certed JasonC L2 back in ’06? 😉

[Ed Dawson]

A couple of other things to keep in mind on multiple Adept trackers in one day… As pointed out you can start the next rocket’s prep as soon as the first rocket is down.

Also, since it sends out a unique morse code signal you should be able to track multiple Adept transmitters on the same frequency. I have never tried it myself, but Tommy Billings at Adept says it works just fine.

[Warren B. MusselmanModerator]

The problem with that is the ID morse code sequence only happens once per minute and the tracking beeps are every 2 seconds I beleive. 90% of tracking is homing in on the regular beeps and not on the ID morse code sequence.

[Anonymous]

Another issue is that while your bird is down, and you are on the way to find it, you get overrun with the new rocket’s transmission. I have also been between two rockets on the ground and it was tough to find either (though we eventually did). The Adept system is *not* good when you have more than one transmission going on. MK’s doggie collar looks outstanding…. I hope to try that this year.

[muleParticipant]

Hey Adrian, where did you end up mounting that beeline?
I started thinking about putting it in the nose cone w/ the antenna positioned inside the body till it deploys the main chute.
PS, great flight.

You guys are making me really glad that I got the beeline…… That Adept system sounds like a pain to work around.

All, I have about a 24×36 board with easel and a pack of pens sitting here. I will bring it to the April launch – If I don’t get called out to KS for work. I have three birds to fly, two are new……. If I get the VA in time I may have it ready too.

[AdrianParticipant]

Greg,

I put the Beeline on the back of a little sled that has the Parrot, a screw switch and the deployment/Beeline battery on the front side. The antenna stuck out through a putty-sealed hole in the front bulkhead. I used one Li-poly cell to power both the Beeline and do the deployment charge.

Using the same cell for the Beeline and the Parrot ties their grounds together, which causes a small error to show up in the baro readings during the Beeline’s beeps, that you can barely make out in the following plot:

Putting yours in the nosecone should work fine. You can make sure the antenna comes out straight after deployment by taping it to your shock cord.

[Jason Chamberlin]

For my Walston, I always put it in the nosecone very similar to the way Conway did on Full Throttle. I have never had a problem with the transmitter coming out or losing any signal.

[Warren B. MusselmanModerator]

Actually, the Adept system is great and quite cheap ($60) compared to any other transmitter. Until this winter, we had fewer than 10 people in the club who ever flew transmitters with most of them borrowing the 3 or 4 of them owned by the same 4 club members. It was a rare day when more than one or two people flew transmitters and rarer still when folks wanted to fly them at the same time.

It seems that since last fall, folks are going nuts for transmitters and using them for flights that aren’t nearly high enough to require them. In general, it was unheard of for someone to fly an HPR bird with a tracking transmitter to less than 10K AGL unless the bird was very small like some of the first SSS birds (29mm x 18″ or less) or F,G altitude birds. Many, many folks have flown I and J altitude birds without transmitters and larger K, L and M birds up to 15K or more without tracking. If you’re flying dual deploy and the winds aloft are calm, they’re generally a waste of time and money because you’ll see your bird come down. The place transmitters are ideal for is for extreme altitude flights, particularly in windy conditions.

Up until this recent spate of folks spending money on BeeLines and the like, I would remind you to ask yourself how often you plan on flying to 12K or up? How many of you think you’ll be flying to 18K or taking advantage of our possible 35K waiver? As of now I know of only 2 people who have expressed interest AND only 1 who has the proven skills to fly to 20K or above and I’m not including myself in that list since I have yet to fly over 20K. Putting a transmitter in a bird just because you can is not a good reason to fly one – particularly if it gets in the way of folks who will be making flights that definitely need a transmitter.

With the number of folks talking about flying transmitters in the 70cm band, I foresee considerable confusion and conflict arising from this. I’m going to bring it up at the next executive committee meeting that transmitter carrying flights should be pre-scheduled for specific time-slots based upon their specific frequency. Perhaps even better would be a token of some sort and only the person with the token can turn on a transmitter. They hold the token until they’ve recovered their bird and turned off their transmitter. At that point the next person in line gets the token and can go fly their Adept or Bee Line. The Adept transmitters are far too sloppy in frequency and the BeeLines use a wide-enough bandwidth that overlap and interference is highly likely given the bandpass on most of the handheld receivers I know to be in use around the club.

Of course this won’t apply to the folks with truly odd-ball transmitters like Mike Konshak or the folks with Rocket Hunters, just the folks who use 70cm band equipment like the BeeLine, Adept and others in the 433 Mhz vicinity. Too many folks depend on these and have flights planned around interference-free reception to allow multiple Adepts or BeeLines interfering with Adepts for this to be handled in a lassaiz faire fashion. I know the last thing I want to have happen is to have my planned 54mm MD shot to 28K lost because someone prepping a bird with an Adept or a BeeLine turned on the transmitter on the flight line while I’m trying to track my bird down to the ground and recover it.

If anyone has any better ideas, I’m definitely open to them.

By the way, I’m going to split this thread off into a new one regarding transmitters sometime this evening when I get home from work.

[Author]

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