An exciting club project...Collaborative Meteorological Soundingby Ron Baskett, LUNAR #188I am coordinating a "club project" to take meteorological soundings with rockets. I have located 5 electronic sensor packages including an approx. 2-1/2 x 3" radio transmitter card with barometric pressure, temperature and wet bulb sensors. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has allowed us to borrow a base station to receive the 403-406 MHz signal and decode the data. It would be good to put these packages up to our maximum clearance, i.e., 3,000 ft.Lynn Kissel has already begun to fit one of the sensor packages in a vehicle and we hope to demonstrate the package at the next few launches (Feb-April). Lynn is adding the sensor package to a specially modified payload section for a 3" diameter payloader that he has under construction. In Lynn's package, the temperature probes are housed in a U-shaped tube that samples outside air using a 12V 40486-CPU cooling fan. Please let me know if would like one of these sounding packages to put into one of your payload sections. The base station can receive 3 simultaneous transmissions. It would be interesting to put more then rocket up at once! I am also working on acquiring a damaged base station and am interested in hearing from volunteers who would like to see if we could bring that station back to life and have a club receiving station for future use. (The electonics were reportedly damages by water.) Ed. You can contact Ron Baskett by phone at (510)462-2197, or e-mail at baskett@llnl.gov. |