Hey,<br><br> I just had a phone conversation with Bill Brown. He and I came to the following for our first flight launch day:<br><ul><li>He has offered to launch a payload similar to ours built his way; tracking device and a camera. We will be flying our current payload as is along with his on the same balloon. We can then compare how well they work.</li>
<li>He will have a couple of his trackers come with us to recover the balloon.</li></ul>For the future launches when we do our competition flight:<br><ul><li>He has recommendations for us to not use GPS and use a really cheap radio chirper on the balloon and tracking it with ham radios on the ground using direction finding and ground-based GPS to triangulate.</li>
<li>He has access to several very cheap parts for photography and tracking that could meet the competition's requirement for under $150/build for one vehicle.</li><li>Replace the hot hands and cooler with a wrap of three layers of bubble wrap. It will act like a greenhouse powered by uninterrupted sun at altitude during the day. He has flown and tested this successfully. It is able to keep the payload above freezing temperatures. <- I will later modify our payload to use this.<br>
</li></ul>On another note, he advised the original MIT team for Project Icarus and mentioned that the cell phone and camera method had a failure rate (loss of payload) of 3 in 4 since they would lose cell signal at altitude. Therefore, we had to be careful with following MIT's project.<br>
<br>Also, since he would like to fly with us on Saturday, he would like to meet at our launch site at Hartselle's J&M cylinder at 10am and launch at 11am. Are we okay with this schedule change?<br><br> - Ethan<br>