One of the goals of the Flying Squirrel mission was to keep the project “affordable” so that a STEM education program or individual can afford to conduct similar missions. The arbitrary chosen goal was to keep the cost per flight under $50.00 USD. The spreadsheet below shows what the FS#1 flight costs were. Spoiler alert, […]

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Flying Squirrels, Ham Radio, High Altitude Balloon, Mission Goals, Telemetry

FS#1 – Flight Telemetry Data

January 19, 2018

The Flight of a Brave Squirrel I spent time cleaning up the FS1 Telemetry data and turned it into and Excel spreadsheet and the following graphs. The FSQCal program we used to decode the FS1 telemetry will record all the perfect message packets into the file fs1.txt as part of the protocol, […]

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Flying Squirrels, Ham Radio, High Altitude Balloon, Telemetry

Flying Squirrel #1 – A success

January 17, 2018

A quick Synopsis More details will follow after I can clean up the data, but here are the flight statistics collected from the balloon telemetry. The flight was a lot of fun and a success! Flight Quick Stats Launch Date 201-1-16 Time of lift-off: 19:24 UTC 11:24 AM PST Launch Location: Anderson Dry […]

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Arduino, Flying Squirrels, Ham Radio, High Altitude Balloon, Telemetry, Uncategorized

FS7 – The Flying Squirrel #1 Flight controller software

January 13, 2018

The FS#1 flight controller is designed to measure basic weather information (Barometric Altitude, Air Pressure and Temperature) and relay that information periodically to the ground via radio telemetry using the FSQ protocol. Additionally, the flight controller conserves battery power by turning off the radio and weather sensor between transmissions. In a nutshell the […]

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Flying Squirrels, Ham Radio, High Altitude Balloon, Launch Announcement

Launch updates – Launch on Jan 16th from Johnson Valley ,CA.

January 12, 2018

Jan 16th 2018 Launch day Weather looking very good for FS1 launch this morning. Predictions show a flight path in a South Easterly direction towards Joshua Tree from our planned Johnson Valley, CA launch point. Expecting launch around 1800 UTC. Tune 28.140mhz usb for FSQ telemetry. #HAB #HamRadio Jan 13th 2018 – Update Winds and […]

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Arduino, Flying Squirrels, Ham Radio, High Altitude Balloon, Launch Announcement, Telemetry

Mission Launch Anouncement – Flying Squirrel #1

January 7, 2018

Meet our intrepid explorer Flying Squirrel One. This very brave explorer will be the first Squirrel Engineering project to be launched in to the upper atmosphere lofted by nothing more than a 36 inch Helium filled party balloon. During the flight, our explorer will dutifully report temperature, air pressure and altitude back to mission control […]

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Flying Squirrels, Ham Radio, High Altitude Balloon, Telemetry

Flying Squirrels #6 – FS#1 Mission and goals, What’s the point?

December 12, 2017

The Mission Before I can describe the flight software I need to make clear what the specific mission goals of Flying Squirrel #1 (FS#1) are. The software design is based upon these goals and an understanding of the goals will make the software easier to understand. In a nutshell the goal of FS#1 is to […]

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Arduino, Circuits, Flying Squirrels, Ham Radio, High Altitude Balloon, Telemetry

Flying Squirrels #5 – The Flight controller

November 9, 2017

The flight controller of Flying Squirrel #1 is the brains of the flight. The controller will measure the environment around the balloon, format the data into a Telemetry message and transmit the telemetry signal back to the ground using the chosen protocol (FSQ) for the flight. The flight controller will also manage the power to […]

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Flying Squirrels, Ham Radio, High Altitude Balloon, Telemetry

Flying Squirrels #4 – Gettin it out there – The Antenna

August 30, 2017

To get the telemetry signal on the air an antenna is needed. By necessity, the antenna must be light weight and simple. The size of an antenna is determined by the frequency we need the antenna to work at. The lower the frequency, the larger the antenna will be (There are exceptions to this rule […]

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Arduino, Flying Squirrels, Ham Radio, High Altitude Balloon, Telemetry, WSPR

Flying Squirrels #3 – Can you hear me now? – Building a transmitter

August 30, 2017

Now that I have a list of protocols and a general plan to transmit telemetry on the 20 meter Ham bands, how do I get “on the air”? This post will describe the transmitter hardware for the telemetry system. Generating Radio Frequency – There is a board for that. After a lot of searching an […]

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