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. ❓

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 24x36 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.

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.

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.

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.

Thanks Adrian.
I really appreciate the pictures.
Greg

Greg, you're welcome.

Warren, I agree that it would be better for people not to fly transmitters for rockets that stay in sight. But any motor larger than an A can be sent out of sight, given a sufficiently efficient rocket. Designing efficiently is what makes rockets interesting for me. If I had been more successful at prevailing upon Greg Clark to make a skinnier BeeLine, I'd be flying a tracker in rockets going for D, C, and maybe B club records, because that would be the only way to find them, short of making a streamer or chute a lot bigger than it would otherwise need to be.

Warren,
I can understand a need for concern. However, I would like to toss some thoughts out on this.

1) If there is that much of a variance on the transmitter frequencies when they are supposed to be on a fixed frequency, I would consider someone's equipment faulty. I can't see how they can vary as much as you have stated. We are talking about a pretty wide bandwidth here and they can't be auto tuning themselves.... If this is the case, I would be embarrassed to sell a product that worked that poorly. I would look more to someone's yagi tuning. If it's not set close to the frequency it's supposed to be picking up, then YES I can see it getting interference from another Tx.

2) It doesn't appear to me that there are actually that many people running transmitter systems. Adrian was the first person in 3 launches that I saw with a transmitter. So, again, it appears to me that there is no problem yet. I can definitely see a need for dialog in advance though. You know better than I would how many people there are, so I'm going to defer to you on that one. I do think that recognizing there could be a problem in the future and taking steps like the board and posting who is planning on Tx launching is good planning.

I personally want to run a beeline in my Black Brant. It's not a dual deploy, it has a 38mm motor tube and can go well beyond my eyesight. It has a 24" vented chute, so it does come down fast. But, I really would take offense to someone telling me I can't track it. That's not saying I wouldn't be the first one in line on a board or making sure someone knows I will be tracking it at a particular launch. It's just the principle of the matter. In the club setting, it could come off as the big boys in the club telling the little guy they aren't good enough to play with the cool toys. I'm not talking for myself, but others in making that statement. I do not know most of you, I am not a member of this club yet, so I really don't like to tell you guys what to do. This is just my opinion and I hope you don't take offense to me posting this.

I've had a long very stressful day, so I tried to say this the best I could without being condescending..... I hope it worked.... 😯

Many perspectives to be mindful of here, and many valid points. I will say that there are indeed times we have had issues with multiple transmitters stepping on each other. MHM and other similar launches will amplify that.

This gets further complicated if we have tightly controlled high altitude windows. Heck, right now, we don't have ANY windows, so that may be a moot point. But if that does happen, when you gotta go, then you gotta go 8) In other words, waiting around may not be a luxury.

Hopefully the doggie collar thing will address all these issues. Glad to see there is some interest in flying out of sight!

JW

Don't take me wrong - I'm far from talking about the "big boys" telling the "little boys" what cool toys they can play with - sorry if it sounded that way. I am far from a "big boy" myself - I just do the website and think too much about potential difficulties.

Until VERY recently, there were only a couple guys using transmitters and we all know one another - coordinating was relatively simple and even then we occasionally had some issues. With what sounds like more than a couple new transmitter users added to the mix, we have to have some way of coordinating so we don't step all over each other. That's all I'm saying.

Warren