| Last Week |
Monday, 5th August |
New fortnight starts today - should be a 12 (swapped from an early) but because the nominal 10 o'clock man is on leave, I'm doing a 10 shift - it's more important to have a 10 o'clock man than it is to have someone on 12s.
Although you wouldn't think it, judging from the amount of work that needed to be done...
Tuesday, 6th August |
Another quiet day, so I had the chance to join the #highaltitude IRC channel on freenode, which is where all the amateur high altitude balloonists congregate. I did this to get some advice about exactly how to implement my eventual plan of having multiple balloon tracking receivers running in the car, while parked up in an advantageous location, or even chasing a balloon flight. I've already acted on that advice - the RTL2832-based digital TV receiver dongles can be used as the front end for Software Defined Radio receivers. They're deaf as a post in this application, but that can be got around with a suitable preamplifier. For single receive, the FunCube Dongle is better (more sensitive) but it can't receive the entire licence-free band in one hit - an RTL2832 can, which allows running multiple SDR backends from the same dongle. I have plans for this, but I'm not going to talk about them yet.
Meanwhile, Dave Akerman has decided that his next balloon flight, this coming Sunday, the 11th, will be an emulation of Felix Baumgartner's epic skydive, but using a modified Babbage bear (the mascot of the Raspberry Pi project) Bionic Babbage will have a RasPi-based tracker installed inside him, complete with RasPiCam for high altitude pictures, and he will jump (or be dropped) from a platform containing another RasPi system to hopefully obtain video of the start of the jump (a la Baumgartner) All this is intended to happen at 39km altitude (31 metres higher than Baumgartner jumped from)
I mention this because I'm hoping to provide a receiver for the distributed network. I'll be using my FT-817 as a receiver, and probably Katy's HP netbook, running dl-fldigi, as the decoder. 3G upstream network connection will allow received telemetry packets to be uploaded to habhub for posting to the online realtime map at Spacenear. At least, that's the plan... Assuming Ulysses is repaired, and I can get the receive system working in time. That's a big ask... even if Murphy doesn't rear his ugly head.
Talking of Ulysses, the garage decided that his inlet manifold gasket is leaking. No spare, of course, so they ordered one. That was yesterday. Comes now the news that they've found that the actual manifold is distorted - by heat - so even with the new gasket, he probably still won't start reliably. This is, as far as I can tell, the only consequence of events during the Cosford trip, but it's still going to lead to a bill of nearly UKP800, plus the lock parts I've already paid for. But I should get a year's motoring out of him after this - until next MOT time...
Wednesday, 7th August |
Still waiting on Ulysses' new inlet manifold. Maybe tomorrow.
I've taken leave over the weekend for the Babbage balloon flight - besides which, I've still got 14 days to take before year end. Well, 12 now, or maybe 11 if I get Friday off as well, as requested. That depends on overtime cover from the other shift. I should hear tomorrow.
I visited the local Maplin today, to attempt purchase of the bits I'll need to install the FoxboardG20 and the associated Sure GPS into the carputer. Of course, the local Maplin doesn't stock any of the bits I need, so a trip to the branch in Hammersmith was called for. And they didn't have everything I needed. But I could order from head office - free shipping, since this was an out-of-stock situation. Those bits should arrive in a day or three - as will the SMA pigtails I'll need.
Thursday, 8th August |
And, due to poor wind predictions for the weekend, Bionic Babbage's skydive has been postponed - predictions indicated that the bear would overfly London. Which is a no-no for air safety reasons.
Later: I've got Friday off as well, so no work now until next Wednesday.
And I also discovered that, due to leaving my mobile phone in another room, that I'd missed a call from the garage. Never mind, they'll call again.
Friday, 9th August |
Postie delivered the other Maplin bits this morning, so I can start on the carputer. I'm also getting Katy's HP netbook updated - and that's a saga. !*?** Norton antivirus will not update - it downloads 180MB of updates, but fails to apply them. Other than that, updates are going well - albeit slowly. It's also several visits to reboot city, of course.
In order to get the netbook set up for balloon tracking, I need an external soundcard. The internal one lacks a line-level input (so what's new, I hear you say) and I don't like attenuating to mic. level, so external soundcard with line inputs it will be. I cannot put my hand on the Edirol UA-1A I bought years ago - it's here somewhere, but I know not where - so I'll have to invest in another. Maplin have several, but I don't need a Creative X-Fi, although their cheaper, no-name, Dolby 5.1-capable device looks OK. Maybe I should check out the local PC World, as well.
Pending completing the updates, I installed a HAB chase car app on the Nexus 7, which required registering for Google, although I'm not using any of their cloud services, other than e-mail. And that's not the easiest of things to arrange. The Google Play store is quite aggressive in pushing for-pay entertainment (books and music) and you cannot close app windows. Android is supposedly quite good at memory management, but I prefer not to have too many background apps running, if I can avoid it.
Anyway, back to chase car tracking. The app I'm using is freeware, written by one Priyesh Patel, and it uses your device GPS to post your location on the Spacenear tracker - using a car icon, which is fair enough. And it works. I've seen my location come up on the tracker. Next up - dl-fldigi.
Later: I paid a visit to the local Maplin, and purchased one of their USB 5.1 channel soundcards, stock number A18FW. It comes with a heavy-gauge USB cable, and an installer CD. You don't need the CD on any recent Windows if you don't need Dolby 5.1, EAX or any other gong. If all you need is sinple stereo line/mic in and line out, just cancel the Windows Update driver search, and all will be good.
I tried it with YaND (Yet anothe Navtex Decoder) on the 12:40UTC transmission from Niton, on the Isle of Wight, but the incoming signal was too weak - I need a better aerial, the ferrite rod in the Eton E5 is not up to the task.
Comes now the news that Jenny couldn't book her birthday steam train trip to Ludlow, on a train pulled by 60163 Tornado, the 50th LNER A1 class. 49 were built in 1948 and 1949, and continued in service until the withdrawal of steam traction in 1968, when they were all scrapped. Steam enthusiasts started a campaign to build another, from the original plans, and the fruit of this was "Tornado", which entered service in 2008. She regularly pulls trains for Steam Dreams, who operate the Cathedrals Express, and that trip is what Jenny wanted for her birthday, but couldn't book because she couldn't pay for it via mobile internet. Of course, there was no problem from here.
Saturday, 10th August |
Sunday, 11th August |
The only thing I haven't got for the carputer upgrade is some wire. I'd prefer ribbon cable, but Maplin only do grey, with a red tracer on one edge, and I'd prefer rainbow, so that I can split it and have colour-coded wires. Maybe the other components shop in the local shopping street will have something. I'll have to check on Monday.
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