Stratosphere Project

[SENTRY]

I know all about flying with only OSD info and no camera It's very important to have a vTx that will run down VERY low volts.


View this video on YouTube

[gaben]

Awesome!You are a PILOT
Our plane wont be that stable then Yours.
Flying with instruments on a Funjet Ultra will need Artificial Horizont .

[ttucker]

Wow, very interesting project. I fly a FunJet (original one) and glad to hear the FJ Ultra will be part of this. I'm little surprised that the FJ foam will hold up to the low air pressure at altitude, but sounds like you've done the appropriate tests.

I am very interested in seeing the video downlinks as well.

Please supply the links somewhere for us.

[gaben]

Here is the vaacum test of a piece of airframe..


View this video on Vimeo

[ttucker]

What was the minimum air pressure achieved?

Amazing. No deformation at all.

[sim_io]

You can stream the even live on justin.tv so everyone in the community can experience a stratosphere flight live. Some of us are already streaming fpv videos through justin.tv almost daily

[gaben]

10 milliBar was the lowest pressure.The near sealevel pressure is about 1000mBar.
We testing all the components for such a low pressure and for -60celsius together.

Yes there will be streaming broadcast in 3 frames.Groundstation,airplane,Google Earth position.

[ttucker]

So you're not using propulsion due to obvious battery capacity, high altitude negative temp effect on the batteries and so forth?
I'm very interested in seeing your equipment install for the Ultra.
You'll want to keep outside of FJ completely clean, with not the usual external FPV equipment like camera or antennas.
How will you preserve the FJ battery (at low temp) during the assent? You'd almost need some type of heater.
I'd suggest a second set of batteries that power everything (heaters for the FJ flight batteries?) during the assent that detach with the balloon at max altitude and launch, at which point batteries internal to the FJ take over for the decent.

[PilotKeeg]

Why would you add the complexity of a drop system to an already small platform? Without a motor, you should be able to seal up the fuse completely and with a 1.5watt tx on the inside warmth shouldn't be a problem.

[ttucker]

Yep, I wasn't implying to add a motor, just internal batteries for flight electronics, vid tranmitter, so forth. Not sure what the amp draw estimations.
Good point about heat from the video transmitter, but not sure if that would even be enough at -104 deg F.
BTW, what is the video transmission system? I saw the RC link system selection but was the video system mentioned somewhere?